Album review: Starcrawler

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 11, 2018

THERE IS an enormous amount of hype around this LA quartet at the moment, Dave Grohl, Elton John, and Ryan Adams - who produced this, the band's debut - have raved about them, along with many music journos.

The Best Albums of 2017

Music Reviews Thu, Dec 14, 2017

1. The Stevens - Good (Chapter Music)
The second album from the Melbourne quartet has songs by turns haunting, atmospheric, mysterious, catchy, outrageously melodic, lo-fi and raw, and definitely off-kilter. This is Indie par excellence.

Album review: Neil Young + Promise Of The Real

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 30, 2017

LIKE 2006's Living With War, this is Shakey's immediate response to current events. Whereas the latter album was about the Bush presidency and the 'War On Terror', The Visitor centres on Trump's first year in office.

Album review: Morrissey

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 23, 2017

MOZZER HAS never been afraid to speak his mind, but recent pronouncements on Brexit, UKIP, and Harvey Weinstein, have, to put it mildly, left many fans (including this one) shaking their heads at the lack of wisdom on display.

Album review: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 16, 2017

IF LIAM'S As You Were was about getting back to basics, Noel's album - arriving only weeks after Our Kid's - is all for defying expectations and pushing into previously unexplored territories.

Album review: Lankum

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 02, 2017

I RARELY get excited about Irish folk/trad albums, given most are either of the sickly slick super produced variety or else have that purist reductionism which renders trad as a kind of 'living dead' form where jibes that 'it all sounds the same' are not without foundation.

Album review: Slow Place Like Home

Music Reviews Thu, Oct 19, 2017

THE SECOND album from Donegal vocalist, composer, and producer SPLH - aka Keith Mannion - contains what may be a first, or at least a rarity, in electronic music - the use of a waltz rhythm.

Album review: Liam Gallagher

Music Reviews Thu, Oct 12, 2017

THE CLUE is in the title. This is not about reinvention ("I didn’t want to be reinventing anything or going off on a space jazz odyssey," Liam has said.) It's about a return to terra firma after Oasis's end and Beady Eye's failure.

Album review: Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares

Music Reviews Thu, Oct 05, 2017

WARFARING STRANGERS: The Darkscorch Canticles, released in 2013, was a treasure trove of underground Black Sabbath-influenced US metal from the early 1970s by an array of short lived, yet fascinating, bands.

Album review: Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

Music Reviews Thu, Sep 28, 2017

THE LONDON siblings' previous album, Third, found them branching out, for an eclectic, self composed set, encompassing rock'n'roll, soul, funk, pop, blues, and ska. Superscope scales back the diversity to concentrate more on rock'n'roll and blues.

Bowie, Berlin, and the Kosmische Musik

Music Reviews Tue, Sep 26, 2017

AFTER ZIGGY Stardust, The Gouster soul boy, and The Thin White Duke, where could Bowie possibly go next? The answer lay, not so much in the mask of a character, rather it lay in a location, one where Bowie could feel free to be, perhaps, a little more himself.

Album review: Alvvays

Music Reviews Thu, Sep 14, 2017

ALVVAYS DEBUT album was dominated, indeed overshadowed, by one song - 'Archie, Marry Me' - an inspired depiction of young love, defiance, and ennui. Backed by a grandstanding chorus and killer middle eight, it was definitive indiepop par excellence.

Album review: Neil Young

Music Reviews Thu, Sep 07, 2017

SINCE SHAKEY opened up his archives, a treasure trove of magnificent, mostly live, albums, have been flowing out to us grateful fans over the past decade. The latest in this series is an unreleased studio work - Hitchhiker.

Album review: Breakfast Muff

Music Reviews Wed, Aug 16, 2017

IT BEGINS with a 50 second burst positioned somewhere between shouty noise and a song, before changing tack with a gently lo-fi piece of tunefully scratchy pop. In 164 seconds Breakfast Muff have set out their musical stall.

Album review: The Stevens

Music Reviews Thu, Aug 10, 2017

WHILE THERE is a noticeable 1990s' indie and shoegaze revival among Irish, British, and American bands, the Australians are looking much further back for inspiration - to the dawn of indie in '70s' post-punk and the subsequent '80s' DIY scene.

Album review: Mermaidens

Music Reviews Thu, Aug 03, 2017

WHEN IT comes to describing New Zealand rock music, associations tend towards either the melodic post-punk/indie of The Chills or The Clean (both linked with the Flying Nun label) or the melodic, sophisticated pop-rock of Crowded House.

Album review: School Damage

Music Reviews Thu, Jul 27, 2017

YOU COULD be forgiven for thinking this was a lost album, recorded sometime between 1978 and 1981, but only issued this year, given that it sounds as if the world post-1981 (or C86 at a stretch) had not existed.

Album review: Japanese Breakfast

Music Reviews Thu, Jul 20, 2017

DESPITE THE name, Japanese Breakfast - vocalist, songwriter, guitarist, Michelle Zauner - is not Japanese, but Korean-American, and musically, this new album is indebted to the1990s lo-fi American alternative rock and British shoegaze movements.

Album review: Radiohead

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 22, 2017

OK COMPUTER was where Radiohead went from delivering era-defining music - The Bends - to creating an album for the ages; revealing themselves as the successors to Pink Floyd, and admitting, without saying it out loud, that they are a prog-rock band.

Album review: Can

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 15, 2017

TWO MEMBERS studied under avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen; another was a jazz drummer who loved Stax soul; their youngest member was a gifted guitarist and violinist; their vocalist was a free spirit from Japan.

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