‘This place seems nice…’ quips Leisure Society co-frontman Christian Hardy, surveying the audience settling into Winchester Cathedral’s 160m Gothic nave. Before Nick Hemming’s guitar ripples reassuringly into ‘We Were Wasted’, from the band’s debut album The Sleeper. It’s a skeleton…
Category: Reviews
Live | Gruff Rhys & Y Niwl @ Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Amongst the potted palms of the mobile lobby of Gruff Rhys’s Hotel Shampoo, support band Y Niwl emit wave after wave of their own brand of crystalline surf rock. The Peter Gunn-esque ‘Pedwar’ opens the show, followed by the standout Chwech,…
Album | Greg Hall – Run Barefoot Holler
An American-sounding Londoner, Greg Hall has built up an impressive list of film and theatre collaboration credits and now emerges blinking into the spotlight with a debut album in his own right. ‘This Ain’t Love’ and ‘Falling Rain’ – both…
EP | Michael Kiwanuka – I’m Getting Ready
Comparisons have been made between Michael Kiwanuka’s music and that of soul legends like Bill Withers. These comparisons are surely merited, as Kiwanuka constructs simple, steady, and heartfelt songs. He prefers to ensure that he has an earnest voice to…
EP | Jens Lekman – An Argument With Myself
Jens Lekman’s new EP, An Argument With Myself, is his first release for four years, something that fans of his are possibly not used to given his usually impressive work rate. His thirteenth EP is a very relaxed affair but…
Album | Still Corners – Creatures of an Hour
Dream pop as a genre is one that has always been associated with a certain kind of hazy, washed out ambience, one that reflects everything from youthful malaise to the kind of exhausted post-coital joy that only the most practiced…
Album | The Moth and the Mirror – Honestly, this world
This debut album from the Moth and the Mirror has been highly anticipated by many in the Scottish music scene and beyond. Sometimes, with an album so anticipated, it can often be hard to live up to expectation but I…
Album | Jeffrey Lewis – A Turn In The Dream Song
The leaves have browned and are falling in Central Park, busloads of tourists are flocking in for the storybook ‘autumn in New York’ experience, and the countdown is on to the Hallowe’en Parade. Jeffrey Lewis, meanwhile, should be home by Christmas.…
Album | Shimmering Stars – Violent Hearts
It’s the 1950s again! Or is it the 60s? Or the 80s? It’s hard to tell. Violent Hearts, the debut album from Vancouver three-piece Shimmering Stars, is an album unapologetically moored in the past – not any specific past, though, or any…
Album | Stealing Sheep – I Am The Rain
Here in Somerset we have a long founded tradition, one that’s forged a rite of passage for many a disaffected reprobate. Sheep tossing. Without the wit to steal one of these roaming clouds, but the itch to do something, as…