SINGLE: The Big Pink – Velvet

This track so nearly passed me by. I don’t listen to the radio much, I barely watch TV (which ignoring The World Service both so rarely broadcast something of interest), but luckily the night staff at my day job left a music channel running and I happened upon Velvet. You may already know the arrogant […]
– ACADEMY 1, MANCHESTER – I’ve never been too sure whether to love or hate the NME. On the one hand the NME is frequently guilty of touting substandard bands, hyping them to the hills’ highest hillbillies, only to stab them in the back when they realise that no one actually likes them. The hype […]

LIVE: SHOCKWAVES NME AWARD TOUR – 07/02/2010

LIVE: THE DRUMS – 06/02/2010

– SOUND CONTROL, MANCHESTER – Oh the sound, the sound of The Drums. When I heard seven days ago I was going to see them, I got so excited I began practicing my dance moves and planning what to wear to a night I thought would be monumental. This was the act which I thought […]
– FUEL CAFE, MANCHESTER – It is the first night of the year for Ted Harris as having finished his hundred-and-fifty-first essay he is ready to party and the crowd are ready to join him. Though do note this is a Cloud Sounds Presents night so if you do want to party you had better […]

LIVE: THE MALADIES OF BELLAFONTAINE / S.R. GENTS / SAM & THE PLANETS – 06/02/2010

ALBUM: Kathryn Williams – The Quickening

It is ten years now since Kathryn Williams’s second album Little Black Numbers garnered a Mercury Prize nomination. For a select few, including the likes of Dizzy Rascal – touted as Britain’s answer to the likes of Jay-Z but in reality rather more like our answer to MC Hammer – Mercury recognition has been the […]
For those of you who weren’t cool enough to be in the Young Ornithologists Club (YOC for short), Shearwaters are medium-sized long-winged seabirds with over thirty species; and for those of you not familiar with tectonic geography, an archipelago is a chain or cluster of islands. Together they create a sense of something remote, wild and pristine […]

ALBUM: Shearwater – The Golden Archipelago

ALBUM: The Who – Greatest Hits and More

I hate Greatest Hits compilations for their soullessness, but on the other hand, I like The Who – especially for their soul – so this review might genuinely tear me in two, like a piece of Doublemint. ‘Tear me in two, like this album’ might have been a better analogy – the box-set comprises two discs, one […]
Conceived in and named after a museum of antique arcade machines, this Portland quintet have mastered the technique of transforming melancholic resignation into an art form and the result is wholly deserving of admiration. Like Home fades in with computer generated orchestration, arpeggio acoustic guitar notes, and a synth part that later morphs into something from […]

ALBUM: Musée Méchanique – Hold This Ghost

LIVE: OCEANSIZE/VESSELS/AS I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR – 02/02/2010

– ACADEMY 3, MANCHESTER – Attendance is deservedly good for the first support: As I Watch You From Afar. Use of super-heavy riffs and interesting time signatures is done in a good way, not just for the sake of it, yet they do go all 4/4 and melodic from time to time. The shirtless, beefcake […]
– Deaf Institute, Manchester – Pronounced “Dog for Dog”, Dag For Dag are a brother and sister songwriting duo originate from “San Francisco, Sweden” according to lead singer and guitarist Sarah Snavely. The Deaf Institute’s crowd is undeservedly low in numbers and the between songs conversation from the band is met with embarrassed silence. Undeterred, […]

LIVE: DAG FOR DAG/THAO with THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN – 02/02/2010