• Frank Ocean – Blond

    Fame is a funny thing; mercurial, fickle and often fleeting. Once back in the mists of time people became famous just for what they did but now, in our pervasive, insistent culture it’s hard to even distinguish between what someone is and what they actually do. And that’s Frank’s story, ever since his rise as the most credible member of internet championed dysfunctionals OFWGKTA Frank has existed in a place where he and his music are scrutinised, obsessed over and disassembled. Yet it is a wave that Frank doesn’t just ride, but seems to have actively tamed. Ever since the comments on his sexuality, the…

  • Lisa Hannigan – At Swim

    Prior to the release of Lisa Hannigan‘s third solo album, At Swim, a wave of commentary washed away any preconceived perceptions people may have towards her musical style as she unveiled glimpses into a fuller, darker deftness to her repertoire. At Swim comes after a five year interim from her last record, Passenger. The eleven songs, lasting a concise thirty-nine minutes, are more pared but by no means feel compromised or lacking in either content, tone and instrumental arrangements to her previous albums. The discernment gone into making this record adds to the substance and timelessness of the songs born from sublime…

  • Exploded View – Exploded View

    Formed in somewhat Atoms For Peace-esque circumstances, Exploded View came together in 2014 when ‘UK-born, Berlin-based political-journalist-turned-musician’ Anika put a band together in Mexico to tour her solo work there, before finding that her and her new group, made up of local musicians and producers Martin Thulin, Hugo Quezada and Amon Melgarejo, had a natural chemistry that deserved to be committed to tape. The resulting self-titled album, released on the ever reliable Sacred Bones label, is cut from similar cloth to Anika’s 2010 solo album – a collaboration with Portishead side project Beak – but is infinitely more accomplished and…

  • Wild Beasts – Boy King

    Boy King, the fifth and arguably most accessible album from Wild Beasts proves that the UK art-pop quartet are, once again, making one hell of a grand statement. Having styled themselves as quite possibly the least laddish alternative rock outfit  around – sensitive, in touch with their feelings and disapproving of the brandish machismo that once encompassed the majority of British pop-rock groups – they have often used their energetic sound to strip back the notion of male sexuality in an attempt to reveal its hidden depths in a brilliantly comic fashion. Boy King is an album bursting with machine-fuelled funk. It takes an unsuspected turn, embracing…

  • Metronomy – Summer 08

    I remember the summer of 2008 pretty fondly, with a cracking European Championships, a family trip to Australia and the release of the Dark Knight refusing to be overshadowed by the Russian invasion of Georgia, Nickleback’s ‘Rockstar’ dominating the airwaves and the impending doom of the move to “big school”. Despite my adventures, it was an even busier summer for Metronomy’s Joe Mount, who was making a step into the big leagues of his own: with the impending release of his second album under the Metronomy moniker, Nights Out, Mount was becoming more involved with the London scene than the Devon nightlife that inspired his band’s…

  • A Grave With No Name – Wooden Mask

    When the first guitar strum on ‘Sword’, the opening track on A Grave With No Name’s latest LP Wooden Mask, cuts through the atmospheric clinking and clattering, it’s clear that we’re in Phil Elverum territory. Alexander Shields, the man behind the Grave moniker, has his sights firmly set on picking up from where The Microphones’ The Gloaming, Part 2 left off. Shields’ output is based on these eerie slices of folk music infused with ambient whispers and these twinges of aggressive, electric and electronic instruments creeping around the edges of the aural plain. Although it never manages to invigorate or…

  • Everything Shook – Drinking About You

    Everything Shook have proven one of the more interesting outfits on the Irish live circuit of late, a kinetic and technicolour blend of music, electro-performance art and synchronised choreography. The trouble with such visual bombardment is often that while it’s entertaining in the moment, it’s a transient thing. However, Robyn Bromfield, Jessica Kennedy and Áine Stapleton demonstrated on their debut release, Argento Nights, that they had the songs to back up the schtick. That three-track EP – as its title implied – was a louche, low-key and murky snippet of the brooding electronica that was to come on Drinking About You. It’s with the foreboding march…

  • Dinosaur Jr. – Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not

    “All I know is that we play hard and a lot of this shit is not fun. Playing is great but the way we live is not the life of a rockstar.” Henry Rollins’ classic tour diary Get In The Van is an hilarious and often harrowing reminder of how deeply unglamorous life on the road was for Black Flag and their hardcore and college rock contemporaries. The leading lights of that scene eventually found financial reward from their sterling work in the pre-Nevermind era, with greatest hits tours by Jane’s Addiction, The Pixies and the Replacements finding them before huge audiences that were simply inconceivable…

  • Drown – Drown EP

    Galway based experimental pop outfit Drown are set to drop their debut EP this month, a snappy four-track release that immediately beams with potential. The post-punk outfit were drawn together by their passion for experimental pop music, emerging with a punch towards the end of last year. Their sound however, suggests otherwise. Self-dubbed unintentional pop, the tracks appear heavily influenced by the more ethereal elements of 80s underground rock, drawing upon the likes of Sonic Youth and DIIV for inspiration. The release sees the five-piece noise outfit rebel against typical pop music, creating a sound that is intoxicating, honest and thought-provoking. Leavened melodies are carried by heavy angular guitar…

  • Russian Circles – Guidance

    In many ways, post-rock is an easy genre. Get a guitar, bass, and drums, load them with enough pedals to make Kevin Shields gasp and repeat a single musical phrase for the guts of seventy minutes and, voilà, you’re the next Explosions In The Sky, This Will Destroy or The Album Leaf. Freebasers will line up far and wide to catch a glimpse of what you’re doing, tv shows will contact you to write the score for their uplifting emotional scene and you’ll write variants of an identical theme for about decade, replacing members faster than an 80’s hair metal…