Author: Joe Skrebels

Joe is a layabout, grammar enthusiast and part-time Latvian. He tweets under the moniker of @2plus2isjoe and blogs at Music From A Green Window.

EP | The Staves – The Motherlode

The happy rise of folk as a commercial force in the last few years was always going to bring in some detractors. With charts in sight, there’s no doubt that those hitting them will perform the same trick as any…

Live | Other Lives @ Village Underground

There’s nothing like a live performance to make it feel like you’ve missed something. Last time this reviewer saw Other Lives, they were on a small stage, in a sweatbox tent at a woodland festival. A few months down the…

EP | Poor Moon – Illusion

The constituent members of Fleet Foxes come from such a rich heritage of previous bands, solo efforts and general musical immersion that it seems a little disingenuous to call Poor Moon a side project, not least because two of the…

EP | Daniel Rossen – Silent Hour/Golden Mile

It’s easy to see Daniel Rossen’s career output as a series of fractions – a quarter of him lies in Grizzly Bear’s work, a half in Department of Eagles – so it seems fitting that his ever-increasing influence has led…

Album | Andrew Bird – Break It Yourself

Andrew Bird has always flirted with the idea of making pop music. His often sprawling, always impressively constructed compositions have toyed with the boundaries between experimentation and melodic straightforwardness for years now, but his strength has always lain in being…

Album | The Twilight Sad – No One Can Ever Know

There has never been a worse time for an ‘80s synth-pop album to come out than now. Even the ‘80s. As Simon Reynolds’ derisive term (and book) “Retromania” gets bandied about more and more, so too does the popularity of…

Album | Twenty-One Crows – Sons of Liberty

The oral tradition of storytelling has been with us for thousands of years. It helped strengthen communities, served as the only means of communicating important news of the day and, in its crucial role as the foundation stone of mildly…

Album | Still Corners – Creatures of an Hour

Dream pop as a genre is one that has always been associated with a certain kind of hazy, washed out ambience, one that reflects everything from youthful malaise to the kind of exhausted post-coital joy that only the most practiced…