Category: Short Reviews

Ballast from the past: It’s been a few years since synth-pop came back into fashion, so it’s only natural that the 1980s vibe that has characterised the genre revival up to now should be starting to take on a decidedly 90s texture. The opening two-punch of Porches’ new album, Leave the House and Find Me,… Continue reading Porches – The House →

Drove All Shite: The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra follow their successful ‘collaborations’ with Elvis by reviving another distinctive and much-missed voice from the past: The Big O, adding lush orchestration to seventeen of his best known hits. Orbison’s downbeat love songs are perfectly suited to the mournful strings of a full orchestra – something which, naturally,… Continue reading Roy Orbison & The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – A Love So Beautiful →

Down by John Thaw: Beat-boxing Canadian bluesmen are woefully under-represented in the world of pop music, so thank goodness for Son of Dave (real name Benjamin Darvill), who is back with another collection of tongue-in-cheek but impossibly infectious rock’n’roll stompers. In a return to the lo-fi sound of his early albums, Music for Cop Shows… Continue reading Son of Dave – Music for Cop Shows →

All He Needs is Noel: If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery than John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney ought to feel very flattered indeed: Liam Gallagher's first outing as a solo performer sounds so much like the Beatles that it could be Oasis. Paper Clown might have been lifted wholesale from Revolver; I've… Continue reading Liam Gallagher – As You Were →

Double, Double, Echo and Reverb: All-female garage-punk trio LA Witch hark back to the gloomy and reverb-drenched sound of the 60s US underground: every track on their self-titled debut borrows shamelessly from the Stooges and the Velvets, but they produce a glorious racket. It’s pretty much impossible to make out the lyrics underneath all that echo… Continue reading LA Witch – LA Witch →

Nationwide (adverts) Appeal: This short EP from indie punk-poet Seán McGowan opens, unusually, with a statement of intent encouraging the listener to remember that ‘there’s more to life than graft and grief.’ If this sounds a little rich coming from someone who also admits to having only been born in 1993, he at least articulates… Continue reading Seán McGowan – Graft and Grief →

Sonic Gloom: The enigmatic Glasgow post-rock outfit have reunited with producer Dave Fridmann for this latest batch of instrumentals, and opener Coolverine’s languid, sonorous bassline at first suggests a return to the style of one of their earliest collaborations, the gloomily minimalist Come On Die Young. In fact many of the subsequent tracks are unexpectedly… Continue reading Mogwai – Every Country’s Sun →

Gallic wheeze: Camille is well known in her native France for making music with a distinctly avant-garde flavour, but has enough pop-leanings that make her work also suitable for perfume adverts and collaborations with lounge-pop outfit Nouvelle Vague. OUi, her fifth solo album, sees her pitched somewhere between a French Bjork and a French Kate… Continue reading Camille – Oui →

Lost hero of soul and rock&roll: Proof that talent is sadly no guarantee of success, Arthur Alexander wrote and performed songs that would inspire covers from icons including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, yet spent the later years of his life working as an anonymous bus driver. For those in the know,… Continue reading Arthur Alexander – Arthur Alexander →

Grasping for air: In Nicotine, Penny, the grieving 23-year-old daughter of a wealthy new-age healer, becomes involved with a gang of squatters whose devotion to smoking makes them pariahs even in anarchist circles. It's a typically offbeat scenario from Nell Zink, the satirist whose previous novels Mislaid and The Wallcreeper were as bracing as they… Continue reading Nicotine – Nell Zink →