The rock ‘n’ roll music scene of 2011 is, as you know if you read this website at all, something truly remarkable and exciting. A scroll down this page alone affords a glance at any number of noteworthy musicians, sprouting and shooting off in countless musical directions.
Rock satire, strangely, …
Yes, ‘Conatus‘. Not a pharmaceuticals company or species of river-bottom fish, but an idea. A spark. The spark, actually. The word ‘conatus’ is a lot of things to a lot of philosophers, but the closest approximation to a definition would be “the will to live”, or “the movement of the …
Treetop Flyers (Photo: Live4ever)
Some bands can sum up everything they are and ever hope to be with the name they choose for themselves. So before you’ve even heard this band play, you’re silently judging them on that crucial name-choice. Bad news for Arctic Monkeys, good news for Treetop Flyers.…
Human experience is a funny old thing. Well. It is if by ‘funny’ you mean ‘an utterly bewildering, unremitting source of confusion and uncertainty’. Starting to see why they say ‘funny’ now… Let’s say then, that Laura Marling’s new album is all about funny old things.
Marling picks up on …
Westerns always start with that same long shot. The tiny figure of a lone rider approaches, contrasted against a vast landscape; mountains, deserts, plains stretching on forever.
That rider seems so small, and the world around him so big. That moment, that imagery, that complete sense of inner peace surrounds …
Everybody knows ‘Sophia‘. Never mind if you haven’t heard the song yet; we all know this girl. Everyone who’s ever fallen out of love has met her, hated her, wished terrible wrongs upon her. Laura Marling has found a way to voice those dark, jealous thoughts, to throw …
Songs like ‘Vessel‘ are ideally played somewhere with a bit of space. A few acres to soak up the sound. A stadium arena would be nice, but a forest spread across a mountain might be more fitting. This music has something of the night and the wild about …
Folk music is time travel. Maybe you didn’t know it, but six men from Seattle know it, and they’re on the road as you read this, raising hairs on the back of necks, spreading the secret of the world in three-part harmony. Skyler Skjelset, Christian Wargo, Josh Tillman, Casey Wescott, …
Before you hear about Jim McCarthy, before you join the dots between the songs and the prisons and the grave, ‘Rise Ye Sunken Ships‘ is already a giant of a debut record. Brimming with stories of doctors, drunks and shrinks, humming with the warmth of worn guitar strings, there’s no …
You know when you wait an age for a follow-up album to an earth-shattering debut, praying to the great turntable in the sky that it’s as good as the first one?
Then you hear it, and your wish is granted. It is as good. In fact, it’s exactly the same …
There is more than a passing resemblance to Morrissey in the expressively pained vocals of Little Vegas Lies’ frontman Simon Moore. One wonders if the Dewsbury five-piece are fans of The Smiths and their brand of contemplative, heartfelt melancholia, though the comparison is not unfavourable; the first release from their …
When the melody for ‘Yesterday‘ first came to Paul McCartney in a dream, he spent a month taking it round the houses, playing it to anyone who’d listen. He was half-convinced he’d heard it somewhere before, long ago. Nobody yet has claimed Yesterday’ as theirs, but every once …
For the last three years, Robin Pecknold has been chasing sound. Something better, something beyond the good vibrations of 2008’s ‘Fleet Foxes‘, something hardly believable to anyone who happened upon that earth-shaker of an album. Well, shut up and believe it. That sound is ‘Helplessness Blues‘.
Review: U2 … 
The English do not know how to do summer. Sad, but true. We give it a go, with open-toe sandals, knotted handkerchiefs, flowery shirts and cocktails with those little paper umbrellas…but then a band like Best Coast hop over for a tour date or two and show us how it’s …
Some bands just won’t sit still. Like fidgety schoolboys who can’t choose between doodling on the exercise book or staring out the window, Noah and the Whale have made new album ‘Last Night On Earth‘, the ultimate daydream record. At times they might as well be scratching their favourite bands …
“Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.”
– Keith Richards.
The pirate’s got a point. Band after band, song after song, the emphasis is too often on laying down a headbanging beat, on letting off a rip-roaring guitar solo, on getting the frontman’s …