Eugene McGuinness had achieved lots of things before we came to know about him when ‘Lion’ was added to the 6Music playlists. Apologies for us being a little behind the times on this one, though it seems we’ve rocked up…
Category: Reviews
Festivals | Cambridge Folk Festival – Part Une
Thursday sees the equivalent of a religious holiday for the folk world kick off as the Cambridge Folk Festival opens for its 48th year. One of the longest-running in the UK, the CFF was first held in 1965 and featured…
Album | Family Band – Grace & Lies
In their sophomore record, Grace & Lies, Family Band juxtapose two fundamentally opposing and paradoxical concepts, and intertwine them to form a being that thrums with life’s most profound questions. The album begins with the unsettlingly with ‘Night Song’, centred…
Singles Round-up | Dog Is Dead, Alberta Cross, Alexander Wolfe, Tashaki Miyaki, James Canty & Church School
Dog is Dead – Glockenspiel Song When I was first this track I did a double take; wasn’t this quirky, upbeat pop number from Nottingham was released two years ago? It turns out I was right – after releasing ‘Glockenspiel…
EP | Bonnie Prince Billy – Now Here’s My Plan
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if modern songs were given the kind of interpretative renditions born by traditional music – if more cover versions consciously shaped meaning, like Bellowhead, rather than merely adapting style, like the Mystery…
EP | WAGWAK – The Way To Drive Into The Arabian Sunset
Made up of singer-guitarist Daehyun Kim and madcap multi-instrumentalist Sangyoung Cho, WAGWAK’s curious moniker is an acronym of We Aren’t Gay, We Are Korean, after they were repeatedly mistaken for a couple. Self-professed disciples of FFS favourites Slow Club, Mumford…
Album | Vanessa Peters – The Burn, The Truth, The Lies
It is hard to believe that Vanessa Peters is on album number seven, and after the much-acclaimed Christmas album released last year, many have been waiting on tenterhooks to see what Peters has got up her sleeve next. Well, rest-assured,…
Album | Moulettes – The Bear’s Revenge
From the opening notes of the frantic opening single, Sing Unto Me, the Moulettes sophomore release The Bear’ Revenge sweeps you up into a world of traditional sounds made suddenly fresh. Georgina Leach’s stunning violin playing, Hannah Miller’s cello, banjos,…
Album | Lawrence Arabia – The Sparrow
Lawrence Arabia, the moniker chosen by Kiwi James Milne, returns with a fantastic new album entitled The Sparrow. Previous album Look Like A Fool hinted at a Beck esque approach in his low-fi production effects but underlying this was a…
Album | Firefly Burning – Lightships
Firefly Burning remind me of Dirty Projectors in their musicianship and clear intention to do genre-bending things; sparks of piano, strings, metallic gamelan percussion and choral voices make this album implacably weird. Their experiments don’t always come off; songs self-sabotage…