Being a touring member of bands such as Sleater-Kinney, Wild Beasts, Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, guitarist for Sky Larkin, as well as venturing into the pop world by being a backing vocalist for Dua Lipa on U.S. show Saturday Night Live, have all somehow fed into Katie Harkin’s debut solo album. The album was […]
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 […]
ALBUMS Blanck Mass: Dumb Flesh Alternately transcendental and crushing, Blanck Mass’ second album takes the abrasive ambience of his debut and marries them to stuttering glitch and punishing beats. Powerful, throbbing sound disorientates, blurring into high contrast synths and ravey stabs, walls of droning noise, exotic rhythms and twitchy samples. It’s aggressive, it’s blissed out, […]
ALBUMS Chastity Belt – Time to Go Home The Seattle band’s second LP is a brilliant testament to drunken mayhem and pondering self-reflection. Sounding a little like an all female version of DIIV. It is lyrically very open to confronting past regrets whilst, at the same time, feeling sedated to them and looking forward. Chiming […]
– THE ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – “Pins hail from your fair city, and they’re awesome!” When the likes of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker offers up such props to their support band, it’s worth paying attention. The US alt-rock legends have a reputation as first class BS detectors, and Manchester’s Pins are – in every way – […]
GIG GUIDE
Between September 2011 and March 2020 we provided a handpicked gig guide every month without fail. It's painful for us that there are currently no gigs to recommend. We hope gigs will return soon to bring you new recommendations, but if you want to reminisce you can still see nine years worth of old gig guides.
