The crammed-in crowd of eager ears awaiting The James Riley Band’s set tonight at The Bedroom Bar demonstrates a pay-off for the hard work in the lead up to the launch of the debut, Lay Me Down EP. “You met me at a festival, I was dressed in a cowboy hat and skirt,” declares...
The Summer Series at Somerset House is back for 2013 with an altogether more FFS-friendly line-up. Eleven open-air concerts will be held during July in the building’s stunning courtyard, a use which beats their winter ice rink hands down, in our opinion. Among the acts will be Icelandic folk-pop rousers Of Monsters and Men;...
Let me get the negative out of the way right off the bat: this was a gig to forget. And I think no-one would like to forget it more than Lissie. It was unprofessional and downright disappointing. If that’s enough negative for you, please skip to the fourth paragraph. If you’re still with me,...
Thea Gilmore’s return, following the birth of her second child, brings with it a 14th studio album in as many years which finds her on top of her game. Gilmore herself admits the time she took away from music helped refresh her approach to making music, resulting in a more confident sound, and this...
The town of Jackson, Tennessee sits just a little west of the midway point on a long stretch of Interstate 40 which goes by the name of the Music Highway. It is where Carl Perkins came of age, and it is home to the International Rockabilly Hall of Fame, which – despite a rather...
The sixth album of Iron & Wine, the pseudonym of all American Samuel Beam, opens with the industrial sounds of a construction works, only then to jump into a gorgeous guitar intro reminiscent of previous albums. Ghost on Ghost, though feels distinctly different to the soft acoustic whisperings of Creek Drank the Cradle and...
You may not recognise the name, but chances are you know who Jonny Fritz is. We can throw out there his former stage name Jonny Corndawg, and perhaps we’ll still get a few blank expressions, but the name Caitlin Rose should do the trick. Corndawg has long been a touring partner of Rose, and...
Similarities between Evening Hymns and Bon Iver are abundant. On the recently released Spectral Dusk, sonic layers build over muted, military beats and the beauty is in each carefully crafted detail. The record was even recorded in a log cabin in Perth, Ontario. However, where Perth was expansive – the eye of a golden...
Fade in. Exterior shot. Non-descript North American suburbs. A long street, lined with pristine houses and sedans, filled with people in suits and ties climbing into their cars and driving off for work. Straight cut to a train station. A bustling crowd wait impatiently as a train pulls into the platform. The doors open,...
Organisers of Hop Farm in Paddock Wood, near Tunbridge Wells have announced the cancellation of this year’s festival. In an email to bands and agents, Hop Farm boss Vince Power said: “After reviewing the ticket sales on Hop Farm and the predicted final figures the festival would suffer unsustainable losses so therefore, as from today,...
Strictly speaking, we’ve already introduced Hoshal Patrick, the delightfully dreamy duo with the air of a very chilled-out Smiths about them – check out the very favourable reviews from our New Bands Panel. Find out a bit more about the boys here, including their plans for a dubfolk revolution and what they’d do with a...
As Suede become the latest Britpop band to hit the road on the reunion trail – sporting, it should be said, a creditable comeback album – it is slowly dawning on those of us who were there to enjoy the movement first hand that it all began almost 20 years ago. Since then, a...
With 2011 album, Viscera, Jenny Hval achieved a surprising hit, garnering generally favourable – if slightly perplexed – reviews, and a spot in Uncut’s ‘Top 50 Albums Of 2011’. ‘Surprising’(particularly for boys club, Uncut) because Viscera was an experimental, part-spoken word, avant-garde-inspired record exploring female sexuality and bodies in the city. Of its many...
For Civil Wars fans, there’s good news and bad news. Six months after the band called an unceremonious halt to their European tour to take a break amid “internal discord“, Joy Williams and John Paul White have announced a self-titled second album is on its way this summer. No release date has yet been...
THE MAC ARE BACK! FFS are super excited about the return of Fleetwood Mac. Up til recently we thought our only interaction with the band would be singing along to Sara at the top of our lungs and defending them to any haters (or ‘idiots’, as we call them). But no! Now we get...
Are you asking? Then Nancy Elizabeth is dancing. The Wigan singer has unveiled an alternative version of the track ‘Simon Says Dance’, one of the stand-outs from her new album Dancing, released later this month. Lyrically it’s a playful track, which begins: “We may think we’ve not met before but we’ve danced out our...
Tom McRae’s fifth album, The Alphabet Of Hurricanes, received a decidedly lukewarm critical response upon its release in 2010, making the decision to release a follow-up billed as a second part of the project, and containing a song of that name, a surprising one. He has earned the right by now to do things...
#79 Ane Brun - This Voice 2013 May 21st, 2013
#78 Natalie Evans - Library Days May 20th, 2013
#77 Dodos - Confidence May 19th, 2013