• Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Mosquito

    Ten years on from their garlanded debut, and four years since their last album, much has changed for Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Singer Karen O has moved to LA from her native New York, and then come back. Guitarist Nick Zinner has taken time off to indulge his passion for photography. Drummer Brian Chase has, through the simple mechanism of growing both his hair and beard, transmogrified into Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds. The question is, in the face of these various transitions, what has changed musically for everyone’s favourite NYC boho art-rockers? The answer – and apologies if this…

  • Frank Turner – Tape Deck Heart

    It’s been ten years since Frank Turner first howled his lungs out on Million Dead’s debut. One band dissolution, a genre hop, multiple releases and an Olympic ceremony later the Winchester lad is still wailing, albeit with a greater sense of melody. Tape Deck Heart is Turner’s fifth solo album in seven years and it is around this point in an artist’s career that the cracks invariably begin to show – this album is no different. There is an increased feeling of lethargy with some of the music on display. A release schedule like Turner’s puts a strain on any artist’s musical ability and…

  • Altar of Plagues – Teethed Glory and Injury

    After the breakthrough success of 2011’s Mammal, a release which bore witness to the peak of the band’s haunting collision of shoegaze and blackened malignance, Cork’s Altar of Plagues, fronted by WIFE man James Kelly, were guaranteed to be subject to scrutiny regardless of their next sonic step. Thankfully, they seem to have exhibited typical disregard for expectations and come out even stronger, and Teethed Glory and Injury as a result is their strongest, starkest statement yet. It is, at once, a widening of their trademark soundscape and a narrowing of focus – shredding, droning electronics and interference bid a…

  • Savages – Silence Yourself

    Someone once said, “hype is a dangerous thing” (which it can be, depending upon who or what is being hyped and, perhaps more importantly, who or what is creating the hype). Just under a year since the release of their debut single ‘Flying To Berlin’, London all-female quartet Savages have been moth-to-bright-light attractive to a very contemporary type of hype – all thanks, that is, to the b-side from the debut single in question. A chromatically descending, shrieking slab of claustrophobic antipathy, ‘Husbands’ felt like a fully-formed masterstroke; a lost post-punk gem propelled by an energy and urgency that came…

  • Peals – Walking Field

    Any time Baltimore crops up in conversation these days, thoughts are likely to turn to The Wire, but the gritty cop saga is far from its only artistic attraction. It’s not the biggest of American cities, but for many years Baltimore has harboured an indie rock underground whose tentacles have spread far and wide. First to make their mark were experimental pop troupe Animal Collective. Then Dan Deacon’s intense and playful compositions began to gain traction elsewhere. Beach House and Future Islands were next to transcend the city’s febrile scene, followed by indie-rock bands Wye Oak and Lower Dens and…

  • Desert Hearts – Enturbulation = No Challenge

    “The opposite of harmonious, cooperative, respectful, calm, serene, disciplined”. A process of “agitating or disturbing”. As anyone who’s ever seen them can confirm, such words could serve as a neat description of Desert Hearts. They are, in fact, taken from the the Wiktionary definition of ‘Enturbulation’, a word coined by L. Ron Hubbard, used primarily by Scientologists and which, now, finds itself gracing the title of the new Desert Hearts album. One of the fundamental practices of Scientology is ‘auditing’, a procedure through which the individual revisits the traumas of the past as a means of elevating them to a…

  • James Blake – Overgrown

    Overgrown, James Blake’s second album, is a tender, heart-sore thing. The music itself is soulful, full of yearning and quiet sadness. And that voice. It’s so gentle, soft as a phantom tap on the shoulder and ghost words whispered in the ear. The perfect medium, then, for songs that are as blissful as that sweet, half-light moment when wakefulness is extinguished and you surrender to the Sandman’s embrace. The title track sets the tone. It’s the sort of music that could come with an ‘In Case of Emergency’ sticker – soothing, unhurried, the song as sedative, to be broken out…

  • Hornets – Truth EP

    With members coming together from multiple bands of varied genre, Hornets’ greatest asset is their three member’s combined experience. Each hailing from very different musical outfits, with that experience they have wisely decided to wait before gigging, to temper and hone their music into something cohesive and mature. The product of this is their debut EP Truth. Was it worth the wait? Opener ‘Truth’ sets the mood for the furious six-song EP and it rarely slows. The first three songs are a blitz of unrelenting noise; ‘No Control’ exhibits some messy guitar dissonance from Andy Shields, and really shows off…

  • The Fall – Re-mit

    It’s never easy reviewing a new Fall album, mainly because – in the experience of this reviewer at least – Fall albums always sound terrible on first listen. You hear it and think “Boysadear, but this is a lot of ramshackle crap”. Then, insidiously – almost sneakily – some angular guitar hook or muttered guttural utterance embeds itself in your brain; you find yourself inexplicably returning again and again to this record that so baffled and frustrated you; fast forward a few weeks and you’re telling anyone who’ll listen that the new Fall album might just be their best ever…

  • Meat Puppets – Rat Farm

    It’s something of a miracle that the Meat Puppets’ last three of their fourteen records have been among their most chilled-out, considering the trauma that’s plagued their careers in recent years – one notable exploit being bassist Cris Kirkwood’s 21-month prison sentence for assault on a police officer in 2003 – but despite, and perhaps in spite of these things, the brothers Meat have come full-circle. Starting out as a bunch of Deadhead hippies, Curt and Cris Kirkwood soon discovered hardcore and had several bouts of musical schizophrenia before Kurt Cobain propelled their name to alt. rock cult heroes via…