• Manic Street Preachers – Resistance Is Futile

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    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

    April 21, 2018 - By 

    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

    April 16, 2018 - By 

    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

    April 13, 2018 - By 

    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

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    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

    April 10, 2018 - By 

    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

    April 4, 2018 - By 

    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…

  • Guided by Voices – Space Gun

    April 2, 2018 - By 

      As if Guided by Voices weren’t prolific enough in their ’90s heyday, Robert Pollard has amped things up considerably in the 2010s. When that classic ’90s lineup reunited earlier this decade, they remarkably pumped out six new albums within a mere two and a half year period, while the current reboot of the 1997-2004 Doug Gillard era produced two last year, including sprawling double album August by Cake. A wealth of new material from a band we once thought were gone for good is something to celebrate, but there’s been an undeniable sense since 2012 that they’ve been spreading…

  • Young Fathers – Cocoa Sugar

    April 2, 2018 - By 

    Words are hard. Try as we might as we attempt to translate thoughts into words, we inevitably truncate the infinite. We’ve spent millennia desperately trying to communicate with one another the depth and breadth of the things we feel and how external stimuli affect us. Think of all the experiences you’ve had and everything you’ve ever felt and then wonder if you’ve ever been able to truly express yourself to another without losing some level of definition. That’s the reason behind the elation of discovering a new metaphor. Occasionally though, you’re faced with an experience or piece of art whose…

  • Yo La Tengo – There’s a Riot Going On

    March 27, 2018 - By 

    Even though it’s a been a good five years since the last Yo La Tengo album proper – discounting 2015’s primarily covers and reworks-based Stuff Like That There – the band’s new album came about more by accident than design. Forced by software updates and the general onward march of technology to upgrade their home recording equipment, new material began to grow out of the practice room jam sessions that developed in order to enable bassist James McNew to learn how to use this new kit. Using these recordings as well as older snippets from over the past decade, the…