Twist Again is a bit like chocolate with chilli in it, full of unexpected combinations: the first track, ‘One Hand Loves The Other’, evokes orchestration by Philip Glass spliced with Nancy Sinatra vocals, and the result is endearingly demented. ‘Triplets’…
Category: Reviews
Album: Chad VanGaalen – Diaper Island
I never expected Chad VanGaalen to write a song called ‘Shave My Pussy’. The artist who brought us the depressingly delicate ‘Willow Tree’ doesn’t seem like someone who would employ that sort of imagery, but there it sits, capping off…
Live: Best Coast @ Thekla, Bristol
After Kurt Cobain’s death, a gathering was held where his rival, and apparent nemesis, Eddie Vedder noted that the fame of Seattle’s grunge contingency might well be down to Cobain’s genius. Whilst Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino has the same love…
Album: Cashier No. 9 – To The Death of Fun
What do you get if you take the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Byrds, Phil Spector, New Order and stick them all into a cocktail shaker? Then serve the contents to five guys from Belfast? The result is Cashier No.9,…
Album: Bon Iver – Bon Iver
Justin Vernon returns with a more integral cast of collaborators for his second album as Bon Iver. The name is drawn from the French for “good winter” (bon hiver) and the often sparse instrumentation coupled with Vernon’s alternately hushed and…
EP: Michael Kiwanuka – Tell Me A Tale
I need to go and see Michael Kiwanuka in person. Only then might I believe he exists, at least in the form we’re told of. Surely it’s more plausible that, rather than being a 23-year-old Londoner, he’s now an aging…
Album | Mechanical Bride – Living With Ants
The once-rarefied (some would say shunned) musical zone of the singer-songwriter has become rather crowded in recent years, a space for any old chap with a guitar and a vintage waistcoat and, as with any burgeoning cultural phenomenon, the more…
Album: Nik Freitas – Saturday Night Underwater
Richey Edwards used to style his hair as Ian McCulloch, John Lennon was initally obsessed with having an Elvis quiff and Ian Curtis tried to dress like David Bowie. Great musicians all have to start somewhere and their beginning is…
Album: Babette Hayward – You Might Be Somebody
It’s been three short years since Laura Marling released her brilliant debut Alas I Cannot Swim. In that time, Marling, along with her contemporaries, has helped to forge the folk revival. This has seen, amongst others, Marling, Fleet Foxes and…
Singles: Marcus Foster, Kyla La Grange, O’Death & Grass House
Marcus Foster – Rushes & Reeds Marcus Foster, possibly best known for having Robert Pattinson sing one of his compositions on the Twilight soundtrack curiously reminded me of a band slightly North of his London roots; Oxford’s Charly Coombes and…