• First Aid Kit – Ruins

    January 22, 2018 - By 

    Written predominantly in the wake of a break-up, the aptly named fourth album from Swedish folk-duo First Aid Kit wades through the aftermath of heartbreak, self-doubt and loneliness, in the search to find something among the ruins. Lead vocalist and guitarist Klara Söderberg had just broken up with her fiancé when she reunited with elder sister Johanna in Los Angeles to write their fourth record. She described the record to HMV as being about the ruins of a relationship, “How sad it is, but also how beautiful it was. That’s all you have left at the end.” It’s a perfect…

  • Video Premiere: Hannah McPhillimy – Ruins

    November 14, 2016 - By 

    For many in the North (and quite a few others further afield) the name Hannah McPhillimy is synonymous with a very particular brand of delicately-woven, jazz-tinged indie-pop. Bearing the imprint of the likes of Feist and Daughter, the Belfast-based North Coast singer-songwriter has been on our radar for a few years now, with EPs Freedom Songs, Seeing Things and new four-track Wind Machine tracing the bloom of an artist whose craft and confidence have segued in sublime fashion. The second single to be taken from Wind Machine, ‘Ruins’ takes a philosophical look at a disintegrating relationship with both its musical and visual backdrop…

  • Grouper – Ruins

    November 4, 2014 - By 

    As far as an album’s backstory goes, Portland’s Liz Harris has given us a good one for her latest release as Grouper. Recorded predominantly in a remote cottage in Portugal in 2011, far from the trappings of what we call civilisation, Ruins is a collection of quiet, deeply personal songs. After last year’s The Man Who Died In His Boat, a companion piece to her most famous work Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill – both of which circle around distorted guitar and chilling vocal layers – Ruins is not so much back to basics as a rejection of…