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: ASH – TEENAGE WILDLIFE

‘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 […]
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 […]

ALBUM REVIEW: NADA SURF – NEVER NOT TOGETHER

ALBUM REVIEW: VUKOVI – FALL BETTER

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. […]
Despite the word ‘dream’ being closely associated with the music of Sir Was, the opening track of ‘Holding on to a Dream’ begins with a sense of urgency; the pop element of his ‘Dream Pop’ being most apparent. The pop that Sir Was does purvey isn’t annoying and has the right amount of reflection too, […]

ALBUM REVIEW: SIR WAS – HOLDING ON TO A DREAM

ALBUM REVIEW: SKYLARK & THE SCORPION – WEATHER THE STORM

Skylark & The Scorpion have created the whole ‘Weather The Storm’ project to be enjoyed as both a film and soundtrack. The film was made in the depths of winter off the Scottish coast near Shetland, and stars the two musicians behind the whole concept Petra Jean Phillipson and Nick J. Webb as the roles […]
It’s very rare that I start listening to something and immediately fall in love with it but that is exactly what happens when I get hold of Parsnip’s debut album ‘When the Tree Bears Fruit’ and hear the delightful opening track ‘Are You Taking Me For a Ride’. In the nicest possible way, it’s utterly […]

ALBUM REVIEW: PARSNIP – WHEN THE TREE BEARS FRUIT

ALBUM REVIEW: SLEATER KINNEY – THE CENTER WON’T HOLD

Watching Sleater Kinney at the Albert Hall in 2015 on their first tour since reforming, was a reminder of how much of a gap in my musical world there had been in the intervening years since they split. I was lucky enough to see them numerous times over the years, and even managed to grab […]
Whatever the history of punk, it’s impossible to deny the huge impact that this short-lived, intense burst of energy, ethos and political statement had on the music scene not just in the US and UK, but across the world. The striking substance-over-style aesthetic to the music, the boundary-pushing, taboo-breaking socially unacceptable behaviour, even the fashion […]

ALBUM REVIEW: COMPILATION – OPTIMISM/REJECT (PUNK AND POST PUNK)