ALBUM REVIEW: PLACEBO – NEVER LET ME GO

Placebo have always walked the line between clever lyrics, and a dark melodic edge, with guitarist and singer Brian Molko and bassist Stefan Olsdal being  the two original members who have kept the Placebo flame burning bright for over twenty five years. Molko has always had an astute lyrical wisdom, which thankfully is still as […]
In the overwhelming majority of cases, it is easy to guess what a band will sound like based purely on its name. Without any knowledge of their respective catalogues, it would not take a genius to work out that Napalm Death were going to have a more abrasive sound than, say, Lush. However, Destroyer are […]

ALBUM REVIEW – DESTROYER: LABYRINTHITIS

The Weather Station

LIVE: THE WEATHER STATION – 17/03/2022

– Gorilla, Manchester – Tamara Lindeman, front woman and driving force behind the Canadian band The Weather Station, stops for a chat with the crowd towards the end of their excellent gig here at Gorilla. Looking longingly towards the corrugated roof of the venue, she tells us “we look at the stars and dream, but […]
Music has had a long relationship with space, dating back to Gustav Holst’s ‘The Planets’ through pop music’s early dabbling, such as The Tornados’ ‘Telstar’ and David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, all the way through to Hannah Peel’s ‘Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia’. Because space conjures ideas of mystery, connection, imagination, infinity and the intangible, it […]

ALBUM REVIEW: BLUE STATES – WORLD CONTACT DAY

ALBUM REVIEW: THE MONOCHROME SET – ALLHALLOWTIDE

When you can count Iggy Pop, Johnny Marr, Jarvis Cocker as fans, you know you must be doing something right. After more than forty years of music making The Monochrome Set are back again with their sixteenth studio album.  From the opening refrains of title track ‘Allhallowtide’ the chamber pop tone for the rest of […]
I can clearly remember where I was when I first heard The Coral, at home tuned into the radio in 2002, the magnificent ‘Skeleton Key’ blasted out with all its frantic rhythms and psychedelic induced melodies, and so began my musical love affair with the scouse musical magicians. They created the kind of melodies and […]

LIVE REVIEW: THE CORAL – ALBERT HALLS

ALBUM REVIEW: JOHNNY MARR – FEVER DREAMS PTS 1-4

Johnny Marr’s Crazy Face studio sounds like a great place, an old warehouse, somewhere in the Mancunian suburbs, its industrialist past now given way to a creative future. It’s where, during the last year, Marr’s album ‘Fever Dreams Pts 1 – 4’ has taken shape. Most of the song writing was done by just Marr […]
In 2011, Metronomy released ‘The English Riviera’ which stands as one of the 21st Century’s landmark albums, blending Joseph Mount’s earlier creative dance music with sophisticated pop in a loose concept album that reenvisaged Torquay as an elegant resort. Like Magnetic Fields after ’69 Love Songs’ or Sufjan Stevens with ‘Illinois’, the problem becomes how […]

ALBUM REVIEW: METRONOMY – SMALL WORLD

Big Thief

LIVE: BIG THIEF – 24/02/2022

– Academy, Manchester – Magical bands do not come along that often. To be a magical band, you have to have an alchemy that is almost undefinable, a mysterious quality that’s all but impossible to put your finger on, something that no other combination of people could achieve, something not even an infinite amount of […]
Let’s face it, the thrill of discovering new music, new bands you’ve never heard of before keeps us music fans entertained and constantly striving for the next music fix. Whether it’s digging through the vinyl and CD shelves in your local record shop, hearing something new on the radio, or in this case getting a […]

ALBUM REVIEW: CARAMBOLAGE – CARAMBOLAGE / EILZUSTELLUNG-EXPRES / BON VOYAGE