Album review - John Coltrane

Music Reviews Tue, Jun 26, 2018

ON MARCH 6, 1963, John Coltrane, along with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones – the line-up that would go on to make the peerless A Love Supreme - recorded an entire studio album at Van Gelder Studios, New Jersey.

Album review: Field Division

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 21, 2018

THE SOUND of Field Divison is best described by borrowing terms from another medium - their music is cinematic and widescreen, one where the textures, atmosphere, and range of sonics fire the mind's eye of the listener.

Album review: Dott

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 14, 2018

DOTT'S SECOND album has been a long time coming, but not only has it been worth the wait, it is also everything you want a follow-up to be, and everything you need it to be.

Album review: Father John Misty

Music Reviews Mon, Jun 11, 2018

FATHER JOHN'S previous album, Pure Comedy, was a vast, sprawling 'state of the American nation' address, and consequently difficult to digest, weighted down by the weight of what it was dealing with.

Album review: The Flaming Lips

Music Reviews Thu, May 31, 2018

IT IS easy to forget The Flaming Lips have been a going concern for 35 years, but this vast, 52 track, three-disc collection, reminds you, not only of their longevity, but their evolution over that time, and their achievement.

Album review: Parquet Courts

Music Reviews Thu, May 17, 2018

PARQUET COURTS have been making excellent albums for some time now, but Wide Awake! is the one where they finally step out from under the shadows of Pavement and The Velvet Underground.

Album review: Beach House

Music Reviews Thu, May 10, 2018

BEACH HOUSE have become a strong argument that dream-pop, and more specifically, shoegaze, should not be considered as just eighties/nineties genres which newer bands revive, but as a living form of music, still ripe for exploration.

Album review: Liz Phair

Music Reviews Thu, May 03, 2018

IF MOST people found Madonna's 1992 album Erotica shocking, there was no way in 1993 the largely sexless world of indie/alternative rock was going to be able to handle Liz Phair's debut, Exile In Guyville.

Album review: Kacy & Clayton

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 26, 2018

THIS IS a new album, but the cover instantly declares that in Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum's world, every day is somewhere between 1965 and 1972, an impression confirmed and copper-fastened by the music within.

Album review: The Shacks

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 19, 2018

OVER THE last 10 years indie music has rediscovered and re-explored 1990s genres, but it is rare to see young musicians going back any further than that. Recently however, a new series of disparate bands - School Damage, Mermaidens, Starcrawler, and now The Shacks - have delved into different aspects of sixties and seventies rock, delivering fresh new presentations of those forms.

Album review: Hinds

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 12, 2018

IT says something about the confidence of Hinds, that they come up with a riff most indie bands would have killed for to built a song around, but which the Spanish quartet are content to use merely as an interlude.

Album review: Frankie Cosmos

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 05, 2018

THE MELODY and manner in which Frankie (aka Greta Kline) sings the opening line of opening track 'Caramelize', her stretching the words, making them rise and fall, as though on some blissful roller-coaster, should send a frisson of excitement through any true indie-fan.

Album review: Courtney Marie Andrews

Music Reviews Thu, Mar 29, 2018

TO QUOTE The Smiths' 'Sheila Take A Bow', "How can someone so young/Sing words so sad?" Courtney Marie Andrews sings like a women who has lived for twice as long, and experienced twice as much, as any 28-year-old.

Album review: Yo La Tengo

Music Reviews Thu, Mar 22, 2018

IN 1971, Sly & The Family Stone released There's A Riot Goin' On, a dark, agitated, brooding, washed-out sounding album of suppressed African-American anger at the state of the USA.

Album review: The Breeders

Music Reviews Thu, Mar 01, 2018

ANY DISCUSSION of what constitutes The Breeders finest hour will always, and only ever, really consider one of two possible answers - the mega selling Last Splash (1993), or its unhinged older sister, Pod (1990).

Album review: Belle and Sebastian

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 15, 2018

THE THREE EPs, released under the How To Solve Our Human Problems title, have now been grouped into one release, and together merge and flow seamlessly as an album.

Album review: Ezra Furman

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 08, 2018

EZRA FURMAN is simply not interested in conforming to anyone's stereotypes: gender fluid, non-binary, gay, a believer in God, he is unapologetic about it all - an individual in the truest sense then.

Album review: Anna Burch

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 01, 2018

ALTHOUGH A debut solo album, Michigan native Anna Burch is not a new entry to indie-rock, given she was a member of Frontier Ruckus, and has appeared on their albums since 2008.

Album review: Dream Wife

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 25, 2018

DREAM WIFE just might be the most exciting new indie-rock band of 2018. Throughout the album's 35 minutes these songs rock hard, without abandoning an indie sensibility, and with a catchiness and pop smarts, while never being mainstream.

Album review: The Go! Team

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 18, 2018

THE GO! Team's fifth album occupies a space equidistant from the funk, soul, and samapdelic urban of 2010's Rolling Blackouts and 2015's indie-pop/dream pop The Scene Between.

E-paper

Read this weeks E-paper. Past editions also available from within this weeks digital copy.