• David Bowie: The Night Before

    August 15, 2013 - By 

    So, David Bowie came back this year with his finest album in about two decades. There is a pretty solid consensus as to when Bowie went awful, but the jury is still out on exactly when he recovered. Some would say it was the overbearing misery and darkness that rekindled Bowie’s fire on Heathen, others think it was Outside and Earthling‘s manic dance energy that threw Bowie back into shape and a lot of people believe that it wasn’t until The Next Day that he managed to overcome the slump. Your writer fall into the Heathen camp but, looking at his…

  • The Icarus Line – Slave Vows

    August 9, 2013 - By 

    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…

  • Fuck Buttons – Slow Focus

    July 31, 2013 - By 

    With a name like Fuck Buttons you’re entering into some dodgy territory. At face value, a name like that seems deliberately and obnoxiously attention seeking. To pull off something like this you need to either go to the extreme (Anal Cunt‘s discography being a prime example) or you have to be good enough to justify such a name (Fucked Up‘s David Comes To Life). In the case of Fuck Buttons, they end up firmly on the side of Fucked Up, releasing what is sure to be one of the most exciting electronic albums of the year. Slow Focus is the…

  • Grant Hart – The Argument

    July 26, 2013 - By 

    In some ways, it must sort of suck being a person like Grant Hart. Amongst a subset of people you had reached a level of respect and adoration reserved only for deities. Your work was critically acclaimed and sold impressively for underground scene. The music you wrote not only inspired a generation but brought about a sea change within the mainstream. And yet you never quite cracked it. You teetered close within the 90s with Nova Mob’s Last Days of Pompeii album – buy it – and your own solo work, but ultimately never got the fame you so rightfully…

  • Young Echo – Nexus

    July 22, 2013 - By 

    Musical collectives are an odd thing. Operating as a halfway house between supergroup and a solo act, they give the artist the freedom to flex their guns whilst also allowing them to drop in and out of the equation whenever they please. Hip-hop and electronic musicians seem to favour this format moreso than others with the excellent Wu Tang Clan and Doomtree being prime examples. So how do the bright upstarts of Brixton’s Young Echo fare with their debut release, Nexus? Not terribly well. Before we begin, I need to stress something: I really love ambient music. Brian Eno’s Music…

  • O Emperor – Vitreous

    July 16, 2013 - By 

    Beginning a career with a great debut album is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you’ve come out the gate running, kicking and shooting wildly into the air. People will take notice and, at least for that moment, everything will seem to fall into place. On the other hand, if you come out too well, then there will be no bullets left and, when it comes time to make your next record, you’ll appear more like John Cleese’s bureaucratic silly walker. Acknowledgement of one’s past and real, internally motivated growth is key to avoiding a Python-esque fate. So when…

  • Floor Staff – The Good Luck EP

    July 12, 2013 - By 

    It’s really difficult to write good pop music; unlike most other genres, great pop requires a level of clarity of vision and perfection that can be cripplingly hard. So it’s always a real treat when exciting pop music lands straight on your lap. With their debut release, The Good Luck EP, Dublin duo Floor Staff have given the world a proper Summer treat. Working with a kitchen sink mentality, the EP mixes emotionally volatile vocals, tight and powerful rhythms and a cracking brass section with effortless effect. The production and mixing is one of the most laudable aspects of the…

  • Before Midnight

    July 9, 2013 - By 

    Love is hard. These three simple words form the basis for many a Meg Ryan, Kathrine Heigl and Jennifer Aniston film. The process of meeting the one you will eventually spend your life with should be arduous and rife with high-larious circumstance. One of you will overreact to a character revelation before the great big “John Cusack with a boombox and some sweet ass Peter Gabriel” moment arrives and makes everything right. Never forget, love is hard. Except it’s really not. Love is finding joy with being with someone almost entirely without care. Love is actually quite simple, it’s the…

  • Surfer Blood – Pythons

    July 8, 2013 - By 

    It’s fair to say that amongst most people of a certain age you’d struggle to find anyone who doesn’t, or didn’t at one time love Teenage Fanclub, Pavement or Weezer. That combination of Ric Ocasek guitar, sweeter than sweet melodies and chunky fuzzy distortion is the perfect mixture for the music fan who loves the power and energy of punk but needs that wonderful hook to drag them in. When done right, you end up with Bandwagonesque, Slanted and Enchanted or The Blue Album, albums so good that cries of heresy instantly follow any sort of critical dissent.  But when…

  • Palms – Palms

    June 28, 2013 - By 

    If you’ll allow me to make a quite large generalization, supergroups are by and large quite awful. To be fair there is some gold in those hills;  bands like CSNY, Cream and Bad Company are a testament to that fact. But any type of music where the self-aggrandizing Scott Weiland fest Velvet Revolver are considered to be one of the better acts, leaves little to be desired. This leaves us with Palms, a four piece made up of metal icons Chino Moreno of Deftones and Jeff Caxide, Aaron Harris and Bryant Clifford Meyer of ISIS. This, on paper, is a…