This is the third Widowspeak release I’ve reviewed, and the first track, ‘Brass Bed’, is lively compared to the sleepy, smoky wooziness of their debut, with a brisk wooden beat. Lead singer Molly Hamilton gives her dreamy voice definition: “Baby…
I saw Laura J Martin play at Bestival back in 2010, looping flute and mandolin to her voice; if you have no patience for vocal oddity (Kate Bush, Joanna Newsom etc) you might find her pixieish otherworldly presence grating, otherwise…
Within/Without signifies a second 2013 release from London trio Bear’s Den. Following on from February’s stunning EP Agape, this latest offering picks up exactly from where we were left, wanting more. Opening track ‘Sahara pt.I’ will already be well-known to…
City Forgiveness, the fifth studio album from the Wave Pictures, is a rare thing: an album full of substance and ideas, but bound in by style. It’s a road trip album, forged from notes that lead singer David Tattersall took…
I’ve been looking forward to Los Campesinos!’s fifth album NO BLUES for absolutely ages. The same will be true for a lot of 20-somethings, for whom LC! have been a bit of a soundtrack band since they first emerged as…
Andrea Tomasi’s debut album, Hurricane Dream, is incredibly beautiful, and instantly comforting on dark autumn days. Beginning with a campfire guitar, the instrumental opening feels self-assured. It was recorded outside, in the woods: crickets chirping away create a natural space…
Light the Boats, released September of this year, is Gill Sandell’s second album since her well received 2010 debut Tarry Awhile. If Sandell hadn’t already established herself as one hell of a singer/songwriter, Light the Boats certainly sets it in…
School of Night is the solo project of The Antlers’ Darby Cicci, who describes this EP as ‘futuristic church music, mixed with sugary pop’. That seems about right, although it also sounds a bit like a daydreaming alien, or a…
There may only be two of them to date, but it is already clear that when you drop the needle on an Anna Calvi record, you enter a world quite unlike any other. Her world is one of cinematic flair,…
I might be the wrong guy to review this record. If you were figuring out the target audience for Israel Nash Gripka’s third record, you’d probably find me sitting on the bullseye, waiting to be picked off with ludicrous ease.…