• Franz Ferdinand – Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action

    Franz Ferdinand have kept a deliberately low profile ahead of their latest release, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, with lead singer Alex Kapranos having being quoted as saying that he felt “misinformation” had been forthcoming about their last album Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. Being cut from a literary sort of cloth, there is – you’ve guessed it – a concept of sorts linking the songs, apparently based around the cynic’s search for optimism and the sceptic’s search for a manual ‘crop up’ here and there. Don’t follow Alex’s words? No, I don’t either, and if your listening pleasure is enhanced…

  • Superchunk – I Hate Music

    This makes absolutely no sense to me. I have no idea why a label would release an album like Superchunk‘s I Hate Music at the tail end of the Summer. This is a record that was perfectly designed for golden hour driving sessions and mid-day drinks in the park. It’s an album that brings a near-insurmountable level of joy and energy with every song. It’s hard not to listen to this sweet little treat of a record without having a stupidly big, ear to ear grin plastered to your face. What’s even more impressive about this whole situation is that…

  • Washed Out – Paracosm

    “Nothing like this sound I make that only lasts the season and is only heard by bedroom kids who buy it for that reason.” Matt Berninger probably wasn’t singing specifically about chillwave on the National’s ‘Lit Up’, but he might as well have been. Like anything sporting the “nü-” prefix or the NME’s current, desperate hawking of “psych”, chillwave was one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-em musical trends that sounded great on first exposure but rapidly vanished like the one-trick ponies they so obviously were. With its easy-to-digest blend of muffled vocal harmonies, shoegaze fuzz and blissed-out Balearic beats it’s not hard…

  • Mogwai – Les Revenants EP

    Zombies. Fucking zombies. There are few things that have assimilated as many cultural touchstones as the zombie phenomenon. They’ve taken movies, classic novels, video games, music and now they’ve taken beloved Scottish instrumentalists Mogwai with the group’s Les Revenants EP (As an aside, if anyone wishes to create a Gremlins zombie mash-up, I won’t complain). The EP, the group’s first release since 2009’s fantastic Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, probably won’t win any new fans for the group but is a neat little treat for longtime fans. For a bit of context,  Les Revenants is a collection of…

  • CFCF – Music For Objects EP

    There is often a stigma attached to the term ‘concept album’ that can generally be found rooted in the lank-haired, progressive rock of the 1970’s and 80’s, and as such, it can be difficult to dissolve any predispositions of the description without looking both further back than this era of musical history, as well as further forward. Davis and Coltrane produced some outstanding examples of conceptually driven jazz back in the 1940’s and 50’s; Philip Glass has explored minimalist and modern classical music beyond the boundaries of the ordinary for half a century or more and in the past 20…

  • Shigeto – No Better Time Than Now

    Zack Saginaw is a man with a distinct mantra. The Detroit-raised artist was surrounded by jazz and mo-town music from an early age, influenced heavily by his family upbringing. After studying electronic production in both New York and London, he has decidedly stuck to his roots ever since. Across numerous releases under the moniker Shigeto over the past few years (itself a reference to his past – his grandfather’s name), his blend of instrumental jazz, dubstep and hip-hop combined with his ever-present fascination with his heritage has yielded a collection of satisfying releases and remixes. His latest effort, No Better…

  • The Icarus Line – Slave Vows

    I love a good steak. It’s a delicious, vaguely healthy treat that tastes like victory with an additional side of glory. The thing I love most about steak is the precision involved in getting it just right. The Icarus Line‘s Slave Vows in many ways is an overcooked LP; one which starts off as a fine rare and ends up as charcoal. The album is definitely one of two parts: the noisy, overlong Stooges covers and the noisy, substantially better Stooges covers. With regards to the first half, it is very clear that Iggy and friends’ Fun House record was the…

  • Scott and Charlene’s Wedding – Any Port In A Storm

    Moving to a new city can be hard. The initial bewilderment at unfamiliar surroundings can quickly give way to crushing loneliness, self-doubt and yearning for days gone by. Working dead-end jobs to make the rent; becoming infatuated in seconds and watching it fade just as quickly; a never-ending supply of encouraging words from newfound friends in bars you’ll never see again. All familiar moments in a life that might be ‘just getting started’, but is constantly dogged by a desire to return to a time when such troubles simply didn’t exist. Scott & Charlene’s Wedding’s second album, Any Port in…

  • The Bug – Filthy EP

    Having spent the better part of fifteen years producing some of the grimiest, dub heavy-ragga-techno-dancehall (of course it’s a genre… right?) as well as building an extensive, impressive roster of collaborations, it isn’t surprising that the latest EP from The Bug (Kevin Martin) is titled Filthy, or features some of the biggest names associated with Grime, Hip Hop and Dancehall providing the truly terrifying MC duties. Delving into his back catalogue of releases and remixes, it’s easy to see that Martin has always had a knack for making music that could comfortably soundtrack an end of the world scenario; his production…