The term “break-up album” has been bandied around a lot recently. Coldplay’s Ghost Stories was teed up as the record to spill the beans on Chris Martin’s uncoupling, conscious or otherwise, from Gwyneth Paltrow, while Jack White and Dan Auerbach…
As their name might indicate, the Cadbury sisters promise a sweet intensity from their music, with its three part female harmonies and emphasis on plucked acoustic melodies. However, repeated listens to their new EP reveals a pleasingly dark bitterness, recorded…
Swopping his familiar position behind the mixing desk to the recording studio himself, Ethan Johns, with a production CV boasting the likes of Kings of Leon, Laura Marling and Ryan Adams to name just a few, has stepped to the…
This is a gem of a record. Pure, simple and undeniable. It took Scottish six-piece Broken Records three years to make their third album, and it sounds like every second of it was time well spent. As with their previous…
There was never any danger of the Moulettes turning out a dull album. Constellations is a punchy, bolshy creature, replete with a dense polyphony of sound and harmony. Building on the alt-folk experimentalism of 2012’s The Bear’s Revenge, this album…
Runaway’s Diary was inspired by the ramblings of Seasick Steve, and by Amy LaVere’s own brief stint as a teenage runaway. She inhabits a similar landscape to Lissie’s whole-hearted country rock, with hints of Tom Waits in his more romantic…
Sharon Van Etten has become one of the most splendid songwriters on earth. Not that she hasn’t had a somewhat torturous journey, but she is starting to really make her mark on popular music. Perhaps popular isn’t the right word.…
If you’ve not been downstairs at the Louisiana, it’s worth a visit for your smaller gigs. It’s a small room, no windows and one staircase in and out – kind of your typical cellar space. This was my first time…
Jackson, Kentucky native Sturgill Simpson returns with the follow-up to last year’s High Top Mountain, one which has already gathered widespread acclaim – and deservedly so. While its unwieldy title could leave even country fans fearing what lurks behind it,…
Yann Tiersen cannot be mentioned, perhaps sadly, without his majestic 2001 Amelie soundtrack being talked about. It must be hard moving on from that. It was, in short, one of the all time film soundtrack masterpieces. He is far from a…