Album review: PINS

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 11, 2015

PINS' DEBUT Girls Like Us made many friends for the Manchester quartet, but the album was more a demonstration of their latent potential rather than a full realisation of it. Two years later and it's a different story.

Album review: My Morning Jacket

Music Reviews Thu, May 21, 2015

I CAN never listen to My Morning Jacket without thinking of the American Dad episode where Stan becomes fanatically, hopelessly, obsessed with Jim James, in what has to be the programme's funniest 25 minutes to date.

Album review: And So I Watch You From Afar

Music Reviews Thu, May 07, 2015

HAVING BROKEN new ground, not only for themselves, but also for the post-rock genre with 2013’s All Hail Bright Futures, Antrim’s ASIWYFA could hardly be expected to reinvent the wheel yet again.

Album review: Rose Windows

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 30, 2015

WHEN THE Seattle sextet unleashed their debut album The Sun Dogs in 2013, its audacity and wide scope was as much part of its appeal as the stunning music that lay within.

Album review: Pale Honey

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 16, 2015

CONTEMPORARY INDIE could be said to divide into two strands, one which takes its cues from the 1980s, the other which looks towards the 1990s.

Album review: The Go! Team

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 02, 2015

LAST TIME out on 2010’s Rolling Blackouts, Brighton collective The Go! Team delivered a set of full on funk, soul, blaxploitation, and samapdelic urban.

Album review: Not Squares

Music Reviews Thu, Mar 26, 2015

IMPRESSIVE THOUGH Not Squares’ 2010 debut Yeah OK was, eight of its 10 songs were completely overshadowed by epic raver ‘Release The Bees’ and the post-punk riff fest ‘Asylum’.

Album reviews: Noel Gallagher and Dr Feelgood

Music Reviews Wed, Mar 11, 2015

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - Chasing Yesterday (Sour Mash)

Album review: Bob Marley

Music Reviews Thu, Mar 05, 2015

ROBERT NESTA Marley would have celebrated his 70th birthday this year had he not been cruelly called back to Zion in 1981 at the tragically early age of 36.

Album review: Rural Savage

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 19, 2015

WITH AN album cover and title that references the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks and all manner of Jamie Reid inspired multiple typeface, Rural Savage leave entrants to their second album in no doubt that their feet are firmly placed within the punk camp.

Album review: Natalie Prass

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 05, 2015

IN JANUARY 2013 Big Inner, an album of blue eyed soul, Memphis horns, funk, and Christianity by singer-songwriter Matthew E White caused a considerable stir. Now he returns to give his schoolfriend Natalie Prass her start, with this, her debut album.

Album review: Panda Bear

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 22, 2015

ONCE UPON a time, January was the graveyard shift in the album release schedule, a time when contractual obligations, works deemed not good enough, and albums labels were not interested in, were unleashed into the post-Christmas commercial wasteland.

Album review: Belle and Sebastian

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 15, 2015

THE TWIN peaks of Belle and Sebastian’s artistic achievements, 1996’s If You’re Feeling Sinister and 2003’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress, have set a high standard for a band that, over its long career, has regularly delivered quality work.

2014 - THE MUSICAL YEAR IN REVIEW

Music Reviews Thu, Dec 18, 2014

BEST ALBUMS OF 2014:
1 Lucius - Wildewoman (Play It Again Sam)

Album review: AC/DC

Music Reviews Thu, Dec 11, 2014

GIVEN THAT founder and driving force Malcolm Young can no longer play music owing to dementia, AC/DC would have been forgiven for calling it a day.

Album review: John Grant

Music Reviews Thu, Dec 11, 2014

AFTER RUINING his second album Pale Green Ghosts with ill-advised dabbling in, and often insipid stabs at, techno and electronica, John Grant re-connects with more organic sounds on this live album.

Album review: R.E.M.

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 27, 2014

THERE ARE many who argue that R.E.M.’s greatest artistic achievements, bar 1992’s Automatic For The People, came during their time on the IRS label, before they signed to Warner in 1988.

Album review - Ariel Pink

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 20, 2014

IF NOEL Fielding had such a thing as an evil twin, then LA’s Ariel Pink just might be it, for in pom pom, he has just unleashed possibly the strangest album of 2014, and certainly the year’s most eccentrically uninhibited.

Album review: Thurston Moore

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 06, 2014

ACOUSTIC GUITARS dominated Thurston Moore’s last two solo albums, but the recent collaboration with Chelsea Light Moving and that magnificent January 2013 show in the Róisín Dubh announced his electric six-string was plugged back in.