• Lianne La Havas – Blood

    August 3, 2015 - By 

    For her second album, Lianne La Havas has traded the acoustic settings of her 2012 debut, Is Your Love Big Enough?, for a lusher, summery sound. Inspired, La Havas says, by her Jamaican and Greek heritage, the album fairly shimmers with plush, melodic soul numbers, usually of the most laid-back variety. At the same time, there’s a refined musical intelligence at work across the album that keeps the attention throughout – not least in La Havas’ expertly judged vocal delivery. While co-producers Di Genius (son of veteran reggae artist Freddie McGregor), Paul Epworth and Jamie Lidell all put in top-drawer…

  • The Flag – Heat Waves

    July 28, 2015 - By 

    One-man racket-making specialist Ted McGrath has hit on to a nice niche here. With The Flag’s Heat Waves, he’s happened onto this strange electronic hybrid. Swathes of eclectic influences, styles and instrumentation all come together in this intriguing amalgamation. Sensations of Girl Band, The KLF and Young Fathers all come to mind as the album takes you on its rather spritely journey. It’s sharp, absorbing and more often than not quite compelling. There are issues with its layout and construction, however, that hurt the experience overall. The proceedings start well with the titular ‘Heat Waves’, this brooding creeping creature which…

  • Wilco – Star Wars

    July 17, 2015 - By 

    “Why release an album this way and why make it free? Well, the biggest reason, and I’m not sure we even need any others, is that it felt like it would be fun. What’s more fun than a surprise?” So posited the ever quizzical Jeff Tweedy on Wilco’s Facebook page earlier tonight, just when pretty much every Wilco aficionado (especially those of us brushing our teeth before bed) was positively not expecting Wilco’s first studio album in four years to be let loose onto the internet for free. Now, rather than answer his concluding rhetorical question (let’s face it, there’s plenty…

  • Refused – Freedom

    July 17, 2015 - By 

    Refused are fucking alive. Or so we’re told. One of the most powerful, vital and cathartic hardcore bands of the nineties, the Swedish four-piece created an unmatched legacy by blazing a trail of fearless musical fusion, incandescendent agitprop and a vast palette of cultural influences and reference points, from fine art to the New Romantics, as best encapsulated in seminal album ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’. Then, at the height of their potency and white-hot rage, they disbanded in a storm of shit and failure, and instructed press outlets to delete reviews, promo pics on file, etc. It was…

  • Ken Camden – Dream Memory

    July 9, 2015 - By 

    You know, Ken Camden, from Lahndan Tahn? Bit of a spiv, sells knockoff jeans and bootleg t-shirts. Once did CDs n’all, but no one cares ‘bout them no more. No wait, that’s Camden Ken. Better instead to concentrate on the name of the album. Dream Memory as a title, along with the striking artwork, does a much better job of setting the scene for what can be heard inside. However, positioning his listener in a suggestible other-worldly location with a couple of words and a picture only partially paves the way for just how exquisite the next 45 minutes of their life might…

  • Desaparecidos – Payola

    July 8, 2015 - By 

    Bright Eyes, and by extension their central member Conor Oberst, are the sort of group who elicit a strong reaction from people. There are those who think him a Dylanesque wunderkind whose every word perfectly summarises all the emotion that their teenage selves never could, others see him as an obnoxious, overgrown perpetual adolescent who needs to get over himself rather swiftly. There is also a decently sized camp who are indifferent until he lets his frustration loose in the rawest manner. Of the three groups, the one who’ll be most satisfied by the man’s latest venture, the long awaited…

  • Sleaford Mods – Key Markets

    July 7, 2015 - By 

    Fresh from well received performances on the festival circuit, particularly the BBC-broadcast Glastonbury, Sleaford Mods have been exposed to a wider audience and remain masters of polarisation. They have become poster boys for the disenfranchised: they’re proud of their roots but they don’t want the music to be undermined or people to misconstrue their working-class stance as validation of lout culture. They are quick to disassociate themselves from the hooligan element, or as vocalist Jason Williamson put it: “If you’re expecting some kind of cross between This Is England and Twycross Zoo mixed in with The Firm then please do…

  • Review: Four Tet – Morning/Evening

    July 2, 2015 - By 

    “If you’re all about the destination, then take a fucking flight” Frank Turner, The Ballad of Me and My Friends What strange and lovely little surprise is this? On June 21, English electronic musician Four Tet quietly released his latest LP, Morning/Evening, via Bandcamp. No fanfare, no big press tour, just the songs available in a free format, which is really an absolutely splendid little treat from one of the more intriguing electronic artists of the last 10 years. Four Tet is by no means an underground artist at this point, so it stands to wonder why he would choose…

  • Benjamin Finger – Pleasurably Lost/Motion Reverse

    July 1, 2015 - By 

    Norwegian producer Benjamin Finger is having quite a prolific year. An insatiable creator, he moves between genres and modes of production without any pressure to stick in one particular lane. Having released the melancholic Pleasurably Lost on niche French label Eilean Rec some months back, he’s just put out Motion Reverse on Dutch-based Shimmering Moods. The two albums are blissful and haunting in equal measure, yet express their respective ideas in hugely opposing fashions. Recorded in Oslo over a period of three years, Pleasurably Lost was inspired by Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. This writer’s work was concerned with paradox and…

  • The Needables – Tales From The Fish Tank

    June 30, 2015 - By 

    How good Country music is considered to be is typically based off one of two things: songwriting ability or the author’s authenticity. For the most part, it’s music meant for working men and women, those forgotten or left behind by society and longing for a return to some former clarity. If you look into the annals of great country music, an almost exaggerated number of its greatest heroes fit this mould to a tee; so it only makes sense that any individual or group that can capture that sense of sadness tinged with bitter optimism while having the appropriately solid…