It’s been an ostensibly serene journey, but even for Midlake the darkening meta was bound at some point to pervade their bubble.
Sometimes things just stand out.
When Midlake’s Roscoe emerged in 2006 its erudite, pastoral and seventies leaning motifs were in direct contrast to the cheekbones, kohl eyes …
The Belair Lip Bombs shift discernibly towards something more ambitious and away from a mode which the band themselves had dubiously described as ‘Yearn core’.
It’s a bit of an unnecessary PSA, but The Belair Lip Bombs don’t come from Los Angeles, or even California, or even America.
The answer …
Daniel Avery delves more into the noise that soundtracked his teenage years, a process of shaping the present by validating his past.
All those superstar DJs, where are they now?
Well, not these days appearing on Boiler Room but that’s an entirely different thing.
And anyway, Daniel Avery has never …
Killed By Deaf (A Punk Tribute To Motorhead) tangles with a legend and comes out on the credit side.
It’s one of the funniest, accidentally Spinal Tap-esque moments in rock documentary history.
Part way through the 2010 flick Lemmy: The Movie (about guess who), a discussion around Motorhead’s soundcheck …
Personality coming in and out of focus, of seeing first vulnerability and then detachment, has always been part of The Lemonheads’ appeal.
Always an easy way to open up any piece about The Lemonheads is to use the box of chocolates analogy; most of the albums from Evan Dando’s mothership …
Brògeal have a determination to make their appeal cross generational and in the process undo decades of young vs. old prejudices.
And it was all going so well.
That early noughties folk revival pulled out some great revivalist albums, from Tunng’s glitchy Mother’s Daughter to Laura Marling’s Alas, I Cannot …
Over time, Nightbus’ sound has been honed into something far more crepuscular than the leftfield pop shape of 2024’s ‘Average Boy’.
There’s something very different about life in the night.
Temporarily, us normies can glimpse it in the rare moments when we either stay up late or go out early, …
Gone is the Husker Du-esque scrabble of Idlewild’s early bombshells; by contrast their self-titled tenth album sounds like a long-lost, grown-up cousin.
Back in the slightly frenzied and uncertain period that followed the demise of Britpop (a genre that unlike the dinosaurs avoided its own mass extinction event and laboured …
Whilst Richard Ashcroft himself has described the mix of styles in his new work as eclectic, mostly ‘Lovin’ You’s vibe is still a mellow, Radio 2 friendly one.
Come to think of it, isn’t one definition of freedom doing whatever you want to do provided that it doesn’t cause harm …
Compiled by the group, The Sheer Action Of The Fini Tribe is a meticulous cataloguing of their first incarnation.
Edinburgh is one of those places that has always suffered a little for its biscuit tin image.
Even now, you’ll get lots of people who think the annual Military Tattoo is …
Moshers have to wait their turn in this fierce and primal mix, but both Fried and the breakneck hardcore of Kin are stagedive ready, an aspect of this community Upchuck haven’t forgotten.
You don’t start writing about music to talk about vomiting, but you can’t deny the times might call …
‘portals // polarities’ celebrates process as well as offering a wider emotional perspective on Night Tapes’ polyglot influences.
Many of us will at some point have done it; having either strummed a chord, blown a note or held down a key, we for the briefest of seconds counted ourselves as …
These songs make Sprints one of the must hear Irish bands from a long line of must hear Irish bands.
Sprints singer Karla Chubb has, like many of us, stared in the abyss of modern living, considered her response carefully and decided: ‘I could not give less of a fuck’.…
As with the deliberate ambiguity of the record’s title, NewDad are happy for listeners to figure some of the answers out for themselves.
It used to be so goddamn simple.
You wrote some songs. You got signed. You made a record. You had a hit.
You went on Later Jools, …
A sense of feeling at right angles, life either in the way or passing you by, thematically pervades much of Nation Of Language’s new record.
Nation Of Language singer and songwriter Ian Richard Devaney doesn’t necessarily seem ready for the big time.
Released two years ago, their third album Strange …
Whoever’s been part of the Metronomy process, the air of a Devonian mad sonic professor at work has never been too far from the surface.
You say to yourself, ‘Hmmm, you sure, mate?’, when a band like Metronomy give a compilation album the well-worn title Greatest Hits.
Perhaps to …