The King is Dead heralds its arrival in triumphant form with harmonica sounding out over a marching rhythm before Colin Meloy’s voice decrees “the turning of the season”. ‘Don’t Carry It All’ is a rallying cry and an instant statement…
Category: Reviews
Live: Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown at the Union Chapel, London
First things first: Hadestown is wonderful. Despite being released just a year ago, it’s safely in my all time favourite albums list and there it shall stay. It’s an incredible record, a sad and affecting story told through smartly-observed characters…
Album: Anna Calvi — Anna Calvi
The opening track of Anna Calvi’s eponymous debut, ‘Rider to the Sea’, is gloriously filmic, a Western in two-and-a-half minutes, complete with rattlesnakes, rumbling drums and gongs. Calvi’s vocals enter only as a crescendo at the end; it’s like meeting…
Live: Roddy Woomble @ Black Box, Belfast – 30/01/2011
Roddy Woomble needs no introduction or support on a bright but chilly Belfast afternoon. We’re full of Sunday lunch and optimistic anticipation of a great show as the occasional Idlewild front man graces the stage with Seonaid Aitken on fiddle…
Live: Teddy Thompson @ Black Box, Belfast – 25/01/11
The Black Box is a dedicated arts venue in the heart of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter and tonight it’s packed for one the most keenly anticipated shows of the Out to Lunch Festival. Even though it’s a school night the beers…
Album: Tu Fawning – Hearts on Hold
The minute Tu Fawning’s debut album Hearts on Hold opens with I Know You Know, one thought will hit you. Portishead. The debt to Geoff Barrow and co. is glaring in this subtle but infectious tune. But don’t get sucked…
Album: Anthony D’Amato – Down Wires
First, let’s do some name dropping. Anthony D’Amato has performed onstage with Bruce Springsteen, and supported the likes of Jesse Malin, Marah and Matthew Ryan. To record Down Wires, he put together a backing band comprised of Canadian star Sam…
Album: Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards – Shakes
It creaks open like an old wooden door in a Elizabethan house, does Dan Michaelson’s voice. The centrepiece of any album Michaelson features on, be it with the Coastguards or the slightly more established Absentee, it’s a voice that is…
Singles: Laura Marling & Johnny Flynn, The Vaccines, Sea of Bees
The Vaccines – Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) ‘Wreckin Bar (Ra Ra Ra)’ by The Vaccines is one minute and twenty- four seconds of infectious guitar music, with touches of retro, surf, the 70s, lo- fi and something new. Justin…
Live: Dirty Projectors @ Koko, 07/12/2010
Listening to the Dirty Projectors is a bit like being inside an oddly syncopated clockwork toy; so much so that as I refresh my memory of this gig, my sister asks why I have two songs playing at once (it’s…