ALBUM REVIEW: SOCCER MOMMY – COLOR THEORY

Ah the difficult second album, it’s something every artist either embraces or dreads, it usually goes one of a few ways, you either make something too similar to the first album or you go in a completely different direction and alienate your fan base. It is a difficult tightrope to walk for any artist, but […]
‘G Stands For Go-Betweens’ is the recently released boxset from the group that helped to define the sound of indie guitar bands, Sadly with the passing of founder member Grant McLennan, The Go-Betweens ceased in 2006, but the phenomenal songwriting partnership of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan is immortalised in the latest edition of the […]

INTERVIEW Q & A: ROBERT FORSTER – THE GO-BETWEENS

ALBUM REVIEW: SUNFLOWERS – ENDLESS VOYAGE

The opening track (Prologue) to Endless Voyage is a minute-long keyboard instrumental consisting of one repeated chord change, gradually building to a brutal segue straight into another instrumental ‘Defective Machine’ – which sounds exactly like it is described: like the pained cries of a fax terminal as it is subjected to prolonged white-noise,-electrodes-and-sleep-deprivation torture.  The […]
‘Kung Fu, do what you do to me. I haven’t been the same since my teenage lobotomy.’ It’s been twenty five years now since Ash released their first full album ‘1977’. The band have had some up’s and downs throughout their career so far. Although considering the three Northern Irish punks practically walked out of […]

ALBUM REVIEW: ASH – TEENAGE WILDLIFE

ALBUM REVIEW: TAME IMPALA – THE SLOW RUSH

What do you get if you go shopping when stoned? Apparently a new Tame Impala album! Kevin Parker the man behind the Australian electro-psych-pop phenomenon, recently stated that getting out of his comfort zone, by doing things such as the aforementioned shopping trip, was all part of the creative process for ‘The Slow Rush’. It’s […]
What? Forty years since Discharge first released ‘Realities of War’? For a few generations, the idea that there was a time before punk rock seems devoid of logic. The household commodities that the first wave produced, are known worldwide and celebrated in their various meanings from politics, society and economic structure. But, to me, Discharge […]

ALBUM REVIEW: DISCHARGE – PROTEST AND SURVIVE – THE ANTHOLOGY

ALBUM REVIEW: NADA SURF – NEVER NOT TOGETHER

Talking to sheep whilst making your ninth album, probably never crossed the mind of Nada Surf’s guitarist and vocalist Matthew Caws when he started writing the demos, yet for this quintessential U.S. indie band apparently that’s what he did on country walks during recording at Rockfield Studios in Wales, and the serene farmyard surroundings appear […]
As Vukovi’s guitarist Hamish Reilly says “There’s not a lot of atonal stuff on our record. I guess I’d call what we do melodic heavy pop-rock.” Personally, I’d go one further and start any description of Fall Better with “pop”, given how strongly front-and-centre Janine Shilstone’s vocals are, and how pure breathy-bubblegum-pop her sound is. […]

ALBUM REVIEW: VUKOVI – FALL BETTER

LIVE: CARAVAN PALACE – 31/01/2020

-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- While waiting in line for a drink, I overhear several conversations about the dramatic turn that Caravan Palace have made with their most recent album Chronologic. These conversations were not ecstatic at the departure from the electro swing of old. I have to say, I share their apprehension as to whether the […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- The post-punk revival is raging, fuelled by the B word and the government and the utter bollocks we wake up to on the news every day. John (or John (timestwo) for internet purposes) are a duo of John’s from Crystal Palace – ‘I’m John, he’s John, we’re John’ they announce, one John […]

LIVE: JOHN – 29/01/2020