• 25 Years On: Looking Back at Pavement’s Debut Album Slanted and Enchanted

    April 19, 2017 - By 

    Slanted And Enchanted, Pavement’s debut album, has aged oddly well in the twenty five years since its release. It’s an album that hundreds of bands have tried to ape and one that few indie rock bands have ever equalled. It would be easy to say that its an album that exceeds the sum of its parts but that would be doing a huge disservice to the band themselves. From Stephen Malkmus’ laconic delivery of his oblique witticisms to the lo-fi/hi-fi quality of the recordings themselves to the band’s winsome way with melody, it’s an album that never fails to delight…

  • Classic Album: The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead (1986)

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    The Smiths recorded their 3rd album ill at ease with their position in the music world. They were unsure of their record label, frustrated at how the media represented them, and perplexed with the public’s perception of the band. Nevertheless, when The Queen Is Dead was released, it presented The Smiths at their zenith, aware of their astonishing abilities and revelling in utilising them to full effect. The confidence bursts forth from the get-go with a 6 minute plus, unbridled thrash of a title track and is sustained throughout the 9 diverse songs that follow it. The musical landscape displays a knowing maturity;…

  • Classic Album: Van Halen – 1984 (1984)

    June 6, 2016 - By 

    Two immense planets having been moving in synchronous orbit around a dazzling sun for a few years now, their every movement in synch with each other. But on one of the planets, a new technological overlord has begun conducting experiments, playing with dangerous new discoveries that will threaten to transform the harmonious nature of these two planets forever. Eddie Van Halen has mastered the synthesizer, and is about to smash headlong into the party-loving world of David Lee Roth, with devastating consequences. The year is 1983, and things are about to get rough. Van Halen’s self-titled 1978 album is one…

  • Classic Album: Ash – 1977 (1996)

    April 27, 2016 - By 

    For a moment, it seemed like anything could happen. Three teenagers from Downpatrick are staring blankly from the pages of Smash Hits magazine, fresh from appearing on Top of the Pops. And in 1996, this kind of thing just didn’t happen. Ash were breaking rules left right and centre, and it seemed like they could only go higher. As Oasis and Blur duelled it out with each other in the charts, the Little Band from Northern Ireland that Could seemed hell bent on one thing: destruction. I was 15 when 1977 came out, and it still seems as fresh now…

  • Road To Nowhere: Modest Mouse’s This Is a Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About, Twenty Years Later

    March 31, 2016 - By 

    What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘driving music’? As musical notions go, it’s one that usually comes with a specific set of aesthetic criteria. Upbeat tempos, big choruses, maybe the occasional indulgent guitar solo. This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About, the debut of Issaquah indie rockers Modest Mouse, turned twenty last Saturday. While directly referencing both a long journey and a clear mind, if anything this album is the protracted, pensive inverse of canonical ‘driving music’ – ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ with a dicey hangover. Modest Mouse emerged in the…

  • Classic Album: Motörhead – Another Perfect Day (1983)

    February 5, 2016 - By 

    1983 was an interesting year to be in Motörhead. After conquering the UK charts with the one-two punch of Ace of Spades and No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith, they’d established themselves right at the forefront of the rock world, a band that could go toe-to-toe with the best of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands, or appealing to the still thriving punk rock scene, whilst simultaneously being perfectly at home amidst more mainstream fare, gooning for the cameras on Top of the Pops. Iron Fist (1982), however, hadn’t been particularly well received. Co-produced by guitarist ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke, the…

  • Classic Album: Can – Future Days

    August 13, 2015 - By 

    This may seem a pretentious review. It probably is.  I may well be using words like “oneiric”*, a word that spell-check tells me doesn’t exist. This is to be expected: this is a Can record I’m talking about, the band I‘m most likely to wax lyrical about, especially when they’re at their least lyrical. This is Future Days, Can at their most impressionistic, most painterly, least literal. Moving on from the pop certainties of Ege Bamyasi, (‘Spoon’, adopted as the theme tune for a detective series, had been an actual chart hit in Germany!) the band decided to break free…

  • Classic Album: Gene Clark – No Other (1974)

    August 10, 2015 - By 

    Gene Clark was the Byrd who couldn’t fly. If that sounds trite (and let’s face it, it is) consider the facts. Clark was one of the original members of America’s answer to The Beatles, and whilst Roger McGuinn was the frontman of The Byrds on hit singles like ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’, it was Clark who provided the majority of their self-penned material during his tenure with the band. But, in an irony that would be delicious if it wasn’t something that happened to a living, breathing person, Gene Clark was afraid of flying. In 1965, with…

  • Classic Album: Television – Marquee Moon

    June 10, 2015 - By 

    I was 17, staring forlornly out of my bedroom window to a street clad in the dimming light of dusk. As the stars began to pierce through the veil of night, one by one, two haunting chords began their journey towards the infinite. As duelling guitars spiral towards their chaotic, yet inevitable conclusion, I found myself standing beneath the Marquee Moon. Just waiting. To my teenage ears, this was perplexing. The music I was listening to, the epic title track to Television’s debut album, had been, and continues to be described as a punk record. But where were the distorted…

  • Classic Album: Pink Floyd – Obscured by Clouds

    March 20, 2015 - By 

    In the wake of the solar eclipse that has captured people’s imaginations, and clogged up their social media feeds, Steven Rainey takes a bit of artistic licence and delves back into Pink Floyd’s history to rediscover an album that finds them revelling in the darkness caused by the blotting out of the sun.Technically, Obscured by Clouds is a soundtrack album for the French film La Vallee, a reasonably obscure oddity that finds a woman going on a voyage of self-discovery in New Guinea. I haven’t seen it, and I’m betting you haven’t either (and if you have, fair play to you –…