Like fish without chips or Wallace without Gromit, when listening to Worry Dolls its hard to imagine what Rosie or Zoe might have sounded like as the two solo artists who met at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and…
Category: Records
Album | Woodpigeon – Thumbtacks and Glue
Mark Andrew Hamilton has the notion in Thumbtacks and Glue that what characterises one’s life is a myriad of little things, rather than one or two great experiences, influences or tragedies. He has mentioned the parallel of Gulliver in Lilliput,…
Album | Eels – Wonderful, Glorious
Mark Oliver Everett is, without doubt, the most consistently bipolar songwriter of our times. Shuttling between the rhapsodies of Daisies of the Galaxy and the chill misery of Electro Shock Blues, the scuzzy rage of Souljacker and the dejected tones of…
Album | Caitlin Rose – The Stand-In
Bookended by a pair of songs about phoning people who don’t want to talk, Caitlin Rose’s The Stand-In is a wide-ranging adventure in heartbreak, disagreement, and loving in the wrong direction on a regular basis.
Album | Ed Harcourt – Back Into The Woods
Written in one month and recorded in six hours; Ed Harcourt’s PR company would have you believe that the best angle on his latest album, Back Into the Woods is the story of its creation. They’d be totally wrong though.…
Album | Heidi Talbot – Angels Without Wings
Of course it’s the voice. Heidi Talbot’s charming new album Angels Without Wings has so much about it to like: there are enough guest stars to make for a modest party – and the “host” musicians led by her husband…
Album | Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push The Sky Away
After two albums of letting it all hang out with Grinderman, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have produced an album of subtle beauty, a soothing antidote to the garage noise of a mid-life crisis put to music. Returning to…
Album | Richard Thompson – Electric
Richard Thompson’s latest album does what it says on the tin. Electric sees him put the acoustic guitar which starred on his last several records to one side and plug in a Stratocaster. Recorded in Nashville in Buddy Miller’s studio,…
Album | The Revival Hour – Scorpio Little Devil
The Old Fashioned Revival Hour, an evangelical radio show broadcast in the United States for more than 30 years until 1968, produced a string of popular records through its in-house choir. But while John-Mark Lapham and DM Stith have named…
Album | Fuzzy Lights – Rule Of Twelfths
Having seen Fuzzy Lights live, I can testify that the Cambridgeshire quintet are absolutely tremendous in that setting, their understated stock delivery offset frequently by squalls of noise astonishingly out of keeping with what surrounds them. It’s as if they…