• James Yorkston – The Route to the Harmonium

    March 28, 2019 - By 

    It’s been five long years since Scottish folk singer James Yorkston’s last solo album – 2014’s The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society – though he’s certainly not been resting on his laurels in that time. As well as turning novelist and podcaster (spinning esoteric tunes on ‘46-30’), he’s put out two highly acclaimed albums in quick succession with his new trio, Yorkston/Thorne/Khan – a sort of folk-fusion collaboration with his regular double bass player Jon Thorne and Indian sarangi player Suhail Khan (a third album is already recorded and ready for release early next year). All the while, though, he’s…

  • Maria Somerville – All My People

    March 25, 2019 - By 

    It’s quite rare to encounter a debut album as self-assured as Maria Somerville’s All My People. The Galway native has crafted 27 minutes of impossibly tight and well constructed music that possess a confidence which is seldom encountered so early in a career. Drawing from the deep wells of everything from folk and ambient to doo-wop and post-punk and the experiences of Irish youth, Somerville mixes these elements into a beautiful concoction of dream pop goodness. What’s so striking about these seven cuts is how well defined each actually is. By its very nature, the sort of ethereal mood that…

  • Sleaford Mods – Eton Alive

    March 12, 2019 - By 

    Jason Williamson’s response to a DWP case officer on 2013 single ‘Jobseeker’ – “I’ve got drugs to take, and a mind to break” – articulated a central anxiety in the work of Sleaford Mods: that a state of unreality, induced by whatever means possible, might be preferable to the unmediated experience of working-class life – and that the people who are supposed to help either don’t understand or, more likely, don’t care. Williamson’s lyrics have brought us to pubs, to drug-deals, to myopia and self-loathing, and Andrew Fearn’s music to what sound like some of the dingiest, strangest nightclubs in…

  • Foals – Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1

    March 11, 2019 - By 

    Foals have returned with their fifth album, or at least the first part of it. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost is a double album released in separate parts with the second half scheduled for release in the Autumn. Double albums are a risky move, and often end up feeling bloated and add weight to the adage that less is more. They’re an endeavour usually reserved for stadium sized acts with little to lose and material to dump, and this is where Foals now find themselves. Having survived the exodus of bassist Walter Gervers, they stride forward carrying the torch…

  • Hozier – Wasteland, Baby!

    March 9, 2019 - By 

    It’s been five years since the release of Hozier’s hugely acclaimed self-titled debut. Tracks like ‘Take Me to Church’ and ‘Someone New’ catapulted the Greystones-native to international attention. Now, having left fans waiting, we’ve been landed with follow-up, Wasteland, Baby! The world has been waiting to see if Hozier would manage to dodge the classic “difficult second album” pitfall. With Wasteland, Baby!, it seems he has. Wasteland, Baby! – despite its name – is an album that feels infinitely more positive and bright than its predecessor. It feels like Hozier is allowing himself to have fun on this record, despite…

  • Pond – Tasmania

    March 2, 2019 - By 

    Perth- based psych-rock wild men Pond return with Tasmania, produced by Tame Impala frontman (and frequent Pond collaborator) Kevin Parker. While their overlapping membership and frequent collaborations with Parker’s giants might frame them as a sort of ‘little brother’ band to Tame Impala, they’re perhaps closer in spirit to fellow Aussies King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard: prolific and seemingly existing in their own self-contained universe, they continue to grow from their garage beginnings to sounding fuller, more eclectic and more out there on each release. Tasmania, Pond’s first LP since 2017’s well received The Weather, kicks off with the…

  • The Gloaming – The Gloaming (3)

    February 25, 2019 - By 

      Virtuoso. The term has undergone somewhat of a realignment of late, thanks in part to the rate of technological advancements spawning a whole new range of art forms and instrumentation to master. Whilst the title clearly draws more gravitas in some fields than others, this hasn’t deterred the term being bandied around a bit too loosely. Timely, then, is The Gloaming’s third offering, whose five masterful musicians taught us to forget everything we thought we knew about the word and its connotations. Since their formation in early 2011, the band has drawn vast critical acclaim, selling out The National…

  • Julia Jacklin – Crushing

    February 24, 2019 - By 

    From the outside of a diary we observe nothing but casual scratches and marks of use on deep brown leather. Gently a hand moves to it, and with intention flicks to the next available blank page. A pen moves swiftly to and fro. Ink enters the page not by any requirement of physics, but seemingly through the weight of the deliberation behind it. Lines cross and titles sit unassumingly, until the sign off they reach outwards; the cover is closed and again the aged leather holds our gaze. Following up her 2016 debut Don’t Let the Kids Win, Julia Jacklin…

  • Panda Bear – Buoys

    February 23, 2019 - By 

    Panda Bear’s Buoys is a mirage of deconstructed indie governed by its uninhibited stream of consciousness lyrical style. His writing makes this one of the most vivid depictions of society in 2019 so far and a lament to a generation condemned by its own vanity. Through minimalism, Panda Bear – Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox – draws the listener’s attention solely to his sincere, reverberated vocals through which he bares a haunting portrait of the modern human psyche. Lennox succeeds in making the familiar sound unfamiliar, taking the roots of conventional tracks and scrambling them into something completely unrecognisable and unique.…

  • Cosey Fanni Tutti – TUTTI

    February 17, 2019 - By 

      Cosey Fanni Tutti’s latest LP, her first solo work since 1982’s Time to Tell, has been described by the artist as an attempt to express “the totality of [her] being”; the music here, Tutti explains, interprets “shifting perceptions of how [past and present] inform one another” – an extension of other recent projects concerned with documenting her history as an artist and provocateur. The record follows an acclaimed memoir (2017’s ART SEX MUSIC), a gallery retrospective focused on the work of her 1970s performance art ensemble COUM Transmissions, and an autobiographical audio-visual installation entitled Harmonic Coumaction scored by an embryonic version…