• Classic Album: Grateful Dead – Live/Dead (1969)

    December 4, 2014 - By 

    The very best music takes you to a different place, a different headspace, to the one you’re in before you hear it. And on the Grateful Dead’s masterful 1969 live album Live/Dead, they grab the listener and pull them head-first into another dimension. You don’t have to be on drugs to enjoy this, but that’s not to say they didn’t need them to create it. The psychedelic era of the late 60s is a problematic time in music history. On the one hand, it saw a generation of talented people reach deep into themselves, and begin to push at boundaries and…

  • Classic Album: Cocteau Twins – Treasure

    November 28, 2014 - By 

    When was the last time you heard something that sounded like it came from another world? We can often be blasé about things now, and with everything being up for grabs and accessible thanks to the ol’ information superhighway, it’s that little bit harder to find something fresh. So try and imagine what it was like when a band from the Scottish industrial town of Grangemouth arrived with something that sounded like it had fallen directly from the kingdom of heaven itself? Minds were, indeed, blown.In no uncertain terms, the first two records by the Cocteau Twins can be filed under ‘goth’. You…

  • Classic Album: The Raincoats – The Raincoats

    November 25, 2014 - By 

    1979 was the peak year for post-punk. Picking up the torch from the already stale and fast dying punk scene, adopting its spirit but injecting it with a new sense of invention, artistry and a range of eclectic influences in place of punk’s self inflicted limitations, there were genre defining debuts from Joy Division and Gang Of Four, as well as classic follow ups from the likes of Wire and Public Image Ltd among many others. The Fall even released not only their first but also their second album that year, featuring two almost entirely different lineups, immediately starting as…

  • Classic Album: The Dismemberment Plan – Emergency & I

    November 24, 2014 - By 

    “The only thing worse than bad memories, is no memories at all” – Travis Morrison, “Spiders In The Snow” Emergency & I is a legitimately great record. It’s one of those rare, incredibly charitable records that just keeps on giving and giving. Repeat listens reveal so many layers and nuances to each of the songs. Musically, everything seems to work. Eric Axelson’s basslines are genuinely inspiring, so good in their own right that they could carry the songs on their own, and often do. This is offset by Joe Easley’s drumming acting perfectly as Axelson’s foil and sliding effortly between…

  • Classic Album: ‘Corndogs from Pedro’ – Minutemen’s Double Nickels On The Dime

    November 20, 2014 - By 

    Punk rock – as a movement, as a mindset, and as a musical rebellion against the status quo – has always had a tendency to slide into an unusual conformity all its own. In the birth of any new scene – after the initial spark of originality – codes are established, styles become uniforms, and common mantras unite bands and fans alike. Perhaps no lyric can define the punk scene in Southern California in the early 1980’s like those of the Minutemen on the track ‘The Glory of Man’: “I live sweat, but I dream light years.” Big ideas that…

  • Classic Album: Prince & The Revolution – Parade (1986)

    October 30, 2014 - By 

    In no uncertain terms, Prince is one of the most important musicians of the 20th century. Between 1980 and 1988 he released a series of albums that are still startling in their invention, originality, and scope. As a pop star, he remains an enigma, and as a performer he is arguably unrivalled. However, the last twenty years have not been kind to him, and as he stages another attempt at grabbing the public’s interest with the simultaneous release of Plectrumelectrum and Art Official Age, we look back at his 1986 classic Parade, and wonder, where did it all go wrong?In many respects, Parade shouldn’t work. It’s the…

  • Classic Album: The Sisters of Mercy – Some Girls Wander By Mistake

    July 2, 2014 - By 

    Incredibly, the Sisters of Mercy have not released any new music for twenty-one years. Their last release was a compilation entitled A Slight Case of Overbombing back in 1993, which featured one new song, and since then they’ve been silent. However, unlike My Bloody Valentine or Guns ‘N’ Roses, who also left epic gaps between records, creating a mystique that sustained them, The Sisters of Mercy have disappeared into the realm of myth or legend, forgotten by all but the most devoted few. But a cursory look at the period they were active shows that they were a Big Deal,…

  • Classic Album: The Divine Comedy – Promenade

    June 25, 2014 - By 

    I’m none too smart, a sumo-intellectual at best, but people often assume I am clever because of my large forehead, glasses and the fact that I talk far too much. My learning is skin-deep and a mile wide but I have a felicitous ability to put random things together in a manner that would answer Lautremont’s dictum: I can’t get any of my dissecting done as the whole place is lousy with sewing machines and umbrellas. But mostly what I like doing is showing off. And this is a record that really shows off. It is, if you like, a…

  • Classic Album: Hüsker Dü – Zen Arcade

    June 19, 2014 - By 

    From the moment you press play, you know that you’re in for something special. Those drums, militaristic and intensely precise, ushers you into this false sense of rigidity and form. Then that bass comes in with its thick tone and fuzzy edges, blurring the sound and removing focus while never losing time. We have a second to breathe and adapt before that guitar comes in. Phasered and distorted to all hell with a piercing shrill undertone, its presence is pushing this carefully constructed structure to brink collapse. This wall of sound is finally scaled by an almost nonsensical barking vocal…

  • Classic Album: Talk Talk – Spirit Of Eden

    May 16, 2014 - By 

    Mark Hollis sits alone in his front room. He is tall, shaggy haired and slightly stooped. Frameless glasses are perched on the tip of his long nose as he flicks through a library hardback on the workings of the inner ear. In the corner of the room is a piano draped in grey oil cloth. It resembles a stunted pygmy elephant with unnaturally dainty feet. The piano is covered with books and the books are covered with dust. Hollis hasn’t played it in years, in decades. Not since he perfected music, in fact. Not since he finished it. Mark Hollis…