A simple but profound truth of gambling is that when you play for big stakes, the potential to lose heavily is sometimes obscured by the possibility of winning big. On Richmond Fontaine’s 10th album, frontman Willy Vlautin has set the…
Category: Records
Album | Other Lives – Tamer Animals
If you like at least some music, it seems unlikely that you could possibly dislike Other Lives. It’s just a fact. Tamer Animals, their second album under this band moniker, is a record satiated by generic influences, gracefully pirouetting from…
Album | Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Mirror Traffic
There’s something about the men behind boring band names. Just as the blunt mundaneity of Elbow’s name belies their swooning instrumentation and the wry lyrics of Morrissey served to emphasise the irony in The Smiths everyday moniker, Pavement were always…
Album | Beirut – The Rip Tide
Now, I’m not a parent, but I imagine there is an overwhelming sense of relief when your offspring makes the switch from gurgling, screeching waif in need of constant attention to something that is more developed and offers a little…
Album | North Sea Radio Orchestra – I a Moon
Listening to North Sea Radio Orchestra, FFS is pretty certain that, had the music teacher in charge of our school orchestra encouraged us to practice this sort of thing, instead of jerky, deeply uncool ‘big band music’, we might be…
Album | The War on Drugs – Slave Ambient
Slave ambient is a very appropriate name for this album full of, well, ambient guitars. Coupled with Adam Granduciel’s vocals, reminiscent of many a country singer, it makes for a very interesting if slightly confused album. Every songs seems different…
EP | Florian Lunaire – Spring and Summer
Florian Lunaire is releasing a series of EPs based on the four seasons with each one being recorded in a different location in accordance to the time of year. Autumn and Winter will come in due course but he has…
Album | I Break Horses – Hearts
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I Break Horses have been created by a fiendish group of artists simply to confound music critics and disprove our own, limited art. As an explanation, here are the facts about the…
Album | Fruit Bats – Tripper
Like a lot of the folk revival album of the last decade, Tripper sounds very 1970s. It’s gentle, toe-tapping pace, its use of twinkling and sweeping major chords and warm pianos, is reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac or Crosby, Stills, Nash…
Album | The Fruit Tree Foundation – First Edition
It’s hard to make a good indie rock album. Harder still if you’re a band of mostly folk musicians plonked in a house together for only five days. And yet, here on this splendid fourteen track album, First Edition, Scottish…