• Drinks – Hippo Lite

    Drinks, a collaboration between Welsh experimental-pop musician Cate Le Bon and Californian sonic-chameleon Tim Presely of White Fence (and The Fall for a brief period), have returned with their sophomore record Hippo Lite. Its creation stemmed from the following activities and amenities or lack thereof: No Wi-Fi, a month in an old mill, river swimming, night sounds. It is by their interpretation, “An album made for each other by one another with no piercing the bubble, the opposite of a typical recording experience”. While it may have been made for each other though, Hippo Lite will, if there is any…

  • Grouper – Grid Of Points

    Recording as Grouper, Liz Harris has been alchemising ethereal and enigmatic albums for over 13 years, combining her gossamer voice and sparse instrumentation with seemingly bottomless layers of tape hiss and static to craft richly detailed and emotionally resonant worlds of sound. With her latest release, Grid of Points, Harris’ spartan musical palette has been pared back even further, dispensing with the looped guitars and fuzzed out atmospherics of her earlier albums to create a pristine and glacial piano and voice record filled with space and extended moments of silence. In lesser hands, the album’s extreme economy of sounds could…

  • My Fellow Sponges – My Fellow Sponges

    Having met through performing drama in university, Anna Mullarkey and Donal McConnon are the creative forces behind Galway act My Fellow Sponges. It’s no surprise then, that among the influences of jazz, folk, pop and rock in their music, one finds a wealth of theatrical experience. Accompanied by David Shaughnessy on drums, Sam Wright on bass and a flurry of instruments, this often unusual, yet carefully constructed combination is the band’s unique selling point. Following success in both music and theatre shows in the time since their last record, the Galwegians have now released their self-titled outing. Where 2015’s debut Bonne Nuit…

  • Manic Street Preachers – Resistance Is Futile

    It’s strange to think that of all the bands who could have lasted long enough to unquestionably become an institution, it was the Manic Street Preachers who claimed the honour. The Welsh punk rockers began their career with middle fingers firmly erected and a depth of knowledge to match their vicious tongues. This is a band who on their first album had Public Enemy’s The Bomb Squad and porn star Traci Lords sitting effortlessly alongside Slyvia Plath, Confucius, and Phillip Larkin. They claimed that would sell “16 million copies” of their debut and then break up in the purest distillation…

  • Le Galaxie – Pleasure

    Any conversation about hard-working bands in Ireland is going to have to include Le Galaxie in some way, shape or form. The Dublin outfit have been making their own brand of slinky 80s electro-pop for nigh on a decade now with a live show that consistently beggars belief. Unfortunately, like many great live acts, the band has struggled to fully distill the manic, magical energy of their stage show to record. While the songs are always fundamentally good, something is often lost in translation; The edges aren’t as spiky and the energy is more muted. Having scored at decent chart…

  • Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Sex & Food

    Filled to brim with squelching alien textures and off kilter grooves, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Sex & Food is an intriguing and at times disquieting listen. Largely preoccupied with themes of isolation and disconnection, it seems fitting that the majority of the album was conceived and recorded far from the outfit’s New Zealand home in a dizzying array of far flung locales ranging from typhoon drenched Hanoi to an earthquake devastated Mexico City.  The disorientating effect of this strange release evokes the free floating ennui of having been on the road too long, feeling washed out and jet lagged in a suddenly unfamiliar…

  • Daniel Avery – Song For Alpha

    Daniel Avery has been DJing for 14 years. In such a relatively short space of time, few others have managed to traverse the techno spectrum quite in the same was he has. While his 2013 debut LP Drone Logic was widely regarded as one of Britain’s greatest ever techno offerings, his studious back catalogue has seen him expertly morph the genre with flashes of acid house, psychedelia and trance to name but a few stylistic ventures. Whether Avery’s trademark energy and intensity has been splashed across his original productions, or cast over in remixes Factory Floor’s, Django Django’s or Munk’s material, the recurring theme…

  • Goat Girl – Goat Girl

    Named in reference to Goat Boy, Bill Hicks’ salacious stage persona, London four-piece Goat Girl give some clue to the contents of their debut album through their own half-abandoned alter egos. Vocalist Clottie Cream (Lottie), drummer Rosy Bones, guitarist L.E.D. (Ellie) and bassist Naima Jelly seem to both crave and dismiss the kind of anonymity that will allow the music to stand entirely on its own merits. Alongside this is a darkly humoured veneer that hangs over the songs, which often masks an incisive sting. Much has been made of the band’s South London origins, and their sonic and geographic…

  • Eels – The Deconstruction

    Describing the thesis of The Deconstruction, Eels’ twelfth record and first in four years, Mark Oliver Everett retains a phrase commonplace in conversations happening globally: “The world is going nuts.” That is not to say, however, that his outlook for the future is bleak. If anything, he is hopeful: “If you look for it, there is still great beauty to be found. Sometimes you don’t even have to look for it. Other times you have to try to make it yourself. And then there are times you have to tear something apart to find something beautiful inside.” There are plenty of…

  • Mount Eerie – Now Only

    You did not walk with me Of late to the hill-top tree By the gated ways, As in earlier days; You were weak and lame, So you never came, And I went alone, and I did not mind, Not thinking of you as left behind. I walked up there to-day Just in the former way; Surveyed around The familiar ground By myself again: What difference, then? Only that underlying sense Of the look of a room on returning thence.  – Thomas Hardy In July of 2016, musician Geneviève Castrée died. She was survived by husband Phil Elverum and her infant…