• 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…

  • Gadget And The Cloud – Songs For Sad People To Dance To

    March 21, 2018 - By 

    The night is over. The pub is closing, the lights are turned on and the bartenders are ushering you out. Hopefully, you have friends in tow. It can be a welcome relief, the nearing prospect of sleep after a long night on the booze, on the floor, dancing to the sounds played at decibels too high to be comfortable on the ears. For others, the end of the night – after the afterparty is fizzled out – brings with it a stunted sadness of sorts, a sort of melancholy spurred on by the early whisper of a hangover. This particular…

  • The Altered Hours – On My Tongue

    March 18, 2018 - By 

    The Altered Hours are a band who wear their influences very firmly on their sleeve. Elements of The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and The Brian Jonestown Massacre (whose frontman Anton Newcombe released the band’s Sweet Jelly Roll EP on his A Recordings label in 2013) abound, but they carry it off with such aplomb that they manage to make this sound all their own. Following on from 2016’s full length debut In Heat Not Sorry and a string of live shows that have cemented them as one of the very best live bands in the country, the…

  • David Kitt – Yous

    March 15, 2018 - By 

    In January of 2017, David Kitt shared an album that would only be available to stream for a week. A throwaway project of sorts, a means to share new material recorded since The Nightsaver, released seven years prior. The initial brevity of Yous predated the release of From Night To Night, the debut LP from Kitt’s techno project, New Jackson by only by a few months. The songs, however, are remarkably different. One provides a passport to escapism, the other eases your return to reality. That is not to say there are boundaries enforced preventing one from getting lost amongst…

  • David Byrne – American Utopia

    March 13, 2018 - By 

    David Byrne should be more egomaniacal than he is. Just take a moment and examine his back catalogue. Any human being who can craft records as powerful and diverse as Remain in Light, Fear of Music, and My Life In The Bush of Ghosts has every right to be as pompous as they like. Add to this the fact that he composed what might be the greatest love song ever recorded (‘This Must Be The Place’) and managed to get traditional music from across Africa played on mainstream radio and you simply have to accept it without question. But what’s always…