ALBUM REVIEW: BJORK – FOSSORA

Bjork occupies a unique place in pop music, famous enough to be accorded a Channel 4 documentary with David Attenborough and to be an answer in prime-time TV quiz shows, yet the creator of increasingly unlikely music. From the early wonky indie of the Sugarcubes, through the first two dance-inflected solo records that made her […]
Kramies is a Dutch singer songwriter from Ohio, who on his latest album has created eight tunes which he states are a like a “polaroid scrapbook of his life”. With inspiration for each song originating in the different life stages and situations he’s encountered over the years it could have made for a disjointed listen, […]

ALBUM REVIEW: KRAMIES – KRAMIES

Soccer Mommy

LIVE: SOCCER MOMMY – 20/09/2022

– Ritz, Manchester – Sophie Allison’s music as Soccer Mommy has always had a cathartic edge (see tonight’s encore closer ‘Your Dog’ from her debut album Clean, with the positively holler-able opening line “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog”), but rarely has it been so goddamn dark as it is on her latest LP […]
The name may conjure up smoky wood panelled rooms and hushed conversations, or loafing around on hazy Sundays, yet this lot couldn’t be further from that imagery if they tried. Lounge Society hail from Hebden Bridge and Todmorden and are the latest band to emerge on the wonderful Speedy Wunderground label. Not fitting in and […]

ALBUM REVIEW: THE LOUNGE SOCIETY – TIRED OF LIBERTY

ALBUM REVIEW: KAMIKAZE PALM TREE – MINT CHIP

The art of falling apart, a theory put forward by those wise philosophers Soft Cell, serves as a succinct manifesto for creating thrilling songs. There is little more delightful than music which is beguilingly odd and unlikely yet still has immediate fluency. ‘The Hit’ by Kamikaze Palm Tree is a prime example, beginning with an […]
Just when you think you know Ty Segall as the modern king of psych rock, he blasts any preconceptions you have of him into outer space, as the ‘Whirlybird’ soundtrack released earlier this year demonstrated. Hot on the heels of that epic, comes his latest studio album ‘Hello, Hi’. There’s always been a touch of […]

ALBUM REVIEW: TY SEGALL – HELLO HI

ALBUM REVIEW: HOWL IN THE TYPEWRITER – THE SOUND OF MUSICK and THE RED ALBUM

During ‘Vietnam Tabloid’, the closing track on ‘The Sound of Musick’, Stan Batcow launches into a spoken description of what it takes for a piece of music to become popular, arguing that it merely has to become familiar. In safe, formulaic music, the listener can easily predict the chord changes, where the chorus and instrumental […]
Anyone who writes a song about a gannet called Nigel, which starts with the opening lines “They’ve all been making plans for Nigel, and by them I mean the ornithologists”, is already on to a winner. ‘Nigel The Gannet’ is a catchy tale of the natural world complete with The Burning Hell’s brilliant take on […]

ALBUM REVIEW: THE BURNING HELL – GARBAGE ISLAND

ALBUM REVIEW – MUSH: DOWN TOOLS

Snappy song titles are a sure way of grabbing attention. Since unleashing ‘Alternative Facts’ as a Too Pure Singles Club release in 2017, Mush have specialised in the sort of titles that suggest a pithy, barbed, obtuse take on the modern world (‘Gig Economy’ with its perfect irony for a band, ‘Hey Gammonhead!’ and ‘Poverty […]
The Wolfhounds’ timing was always askew. Coming to attention at the tail-end of the C86 movement, their debut album ‘Unseen Ripples From A Pebble’ did not fully reflect their garage rock and post-punk racket. By the time they released the far-superior ‘Bright and Guilty’ in 1989, now reissued by Optic Nerve, music press attention had […]

ALBUM REVIEW – THE WOLFHOUNDS: BRIGHT AND GUILTY