• Album Review: Julien Baker – Turn Out The Lights

    October 25, 2017 - By 

    Two years ago Julien Baker put out her debut, Sprained Ankle. A white-knuckled, minimal lo-fi listen, the EP was predominantly Baker and her guitar with the occasional flourish of piano. It was an intimate-veering-on-discomforting voyage into a late teenager’s emotional fragility, isolation, and desperation. There are too many things to be said about that record, but needless to say, it was fantastic from back to front. In keeping with its low-key aesthetic, it was released via Bandcamp wherein it subsequently exploded and pushed Baker into the indie rock spotlight. Upon the announcement of her latest full length, Turn Out The…

  • Album Review: Bully – Losing

    October 19, 2017 - By 

    There are some voices that leave words somewhat redundant. Those special chords that can conjure inordinate amounts with so little. In spite of its deliberately anarchic and amateurish intentions, the punk community has had more than a few. Think of John Lydon’s instantly recognisable sneer, H.R.’s reggae inflections or Corin Tucker’s earth-shattering roar. There is a real magic to them, so every time you find one that even approaches their majesty, it should be a call for celebration. Bully’s Alicia Bognanno has one of those voices: One of those voices that demands your attention and instantly embeds itself in your…

  • St. Vincent – MASSEDUCTION

    October 15, 2017 - By 

    You do wonder how hard Annie Clark, AKA St. Vincent, would have to fall before we stop paying attention to her. In the ten years since her first LP, she’s proven herself to undeniably be one of the best guitarists working today, outmatched David Byrne on their wonderful Love This Giant collaboration and consistently provides a formidable live show to boot. Add to this a run of stellar releases and you’ve got a very rare and special thing on your hands that it’s hard to imagine life without anymore: an artist who can consistently surprise you and yet never let you…

  • Wolf Parade – Cry Cry Cry

    October 12, 2017 - By 

    There’s something so intrinsically pleasant about a group like Wolf Parade reforming despite the fact that the Montreal four-piece never really set the world ablaze with their brand of vibrant, multicoloured indie rock. After eight years they gave up the ghost and moved onto different things. Yet, seven years later here we are with same key players and a new album to boot. This kind of reunion doesn’t feel like some flagrant cash grab or attempt to milk nostalgia tendrils of listeners who are closer to forty than thirty. It feels like they came back together because they had more…

  • Marilyn Manson – Heaven Upside Down

    October 9, 2017 - By 

    There comes a point, where a shock rocker needs to stop. You can only frighten the mainstream for so long before you assimilate and your face has been bought and sold a million times. Consider Marilyn Manson. In the late 1990s, there was an aura of mystique surrounding him. At the height of his prowess, the man was able to perfectly encapsulate everything that a certain person feared. Here was a sexually promiscuous, androgynous nihilist who spat in the face of God. This was a man about whom a rumour about having surgery to help fellate himself didn’t seem that…

  • The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – Always Foreign

    October 7, 2017 - By 

    Music is by its nature manipulative. Artists want to make us feel emotions or even lead us to a new school of thought. It is important never to lose sight of this. It’s all too easy for someone to trick you into thinking they’ve unearthed some great unspoken truth, when really it’s sound and fury, signifying nothing. One of the more curious revivals that our nostalgia-driven culture has bequeathed is emo. Not emo in the 2006 sense of eyeliner, fringes and being “non-conforming as can be”. More in the 1990s sincere-to-the-point-of-parody way. Basically, Mike Kinsella’s American Football. It was a resurgence…

  • Shrug Life – ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    September 22, 2017 - By 

    Every now and then you get hit with shocking realisations about local groups: some of them are actually brilliant. Not just in “ah for a bunch of lads from Fairview, they sure can write a tune” manner, but in a real proper sense. The North and South have produced a few of these: And So I Watch You From Afar, Hozier, Rubberbandits and Lisa Hannigan, to name a few. Given how exclusive of a club this really is though, it’s a marvellous joy to encounter them in the wild. Dublin’s Shrug Life is one of those groups. Bouncy, energetic Gang of…

  • Chad VanGaalen – Light Information

    September 21, 2017 - By 

    After a decade in the business and with seven full-lengths under his belt, Chad VanGaalen is starting to show his wear. The Canadian indie rocker has been a darling in certain circles for an age so any new material is normally a cause for celebration. Sadly, his latest LP, Light Information, is pretty by the numbers stuff; a record with a handful of quite nice moments and interludes that are primarily punctuated by stretches of tedium. The man can spin up a very fine tune when he needs to and knows how to twist in a hook in such a way…

  • Foo Fighters – Concrete and Gold

    September 19, 2017 - By 

    The Internet loves a good pop culture theory right? Tarantino films all share the same universe. Ed, Edd n Eddy is actually a metaphor for hell. People actually enjoy listening to Father John Misty. The list goes on. I’d like to put forth my own one which I think holds some water:         The quality of a Foo Fighters’ album is inversely proportional to the number of members of the Foo Fighters. Let’s look at the evidence shall we? We can all agree that the first album is probably the best thing that the group has put…

  • Sløtface – Try Not To Freak Out

    September 18, 2017 - By 

    A name like Sløtface tends to be a bit of a giveaway that you might be trying too hard. If you want a title like that, you best have the chops to move beyond it. Fortunately for the Norwegian four-piece, they’ve certainly got excellent cuts in their repertoire. Having made a splash last year with their previous EP, Empire Records, the pop-punksters have set the stage for their,  surprisingly solid, debut, Try Not To Freak Out. Taking all the best bits from the ilk of Green Day and Blink-182, the album works because it is unabashedly youthful. This is a…