Lissie – Cuckoo Bouncy, accessible country-pop about driving around in a truck in small-town America, being totally wild, rebellious and free. “Let’s go driving, ‘cause there’s nowhere to go!” Yeah! It all sounds really fun, and really bad for the…
Category: Reviews
Album: Heidi Spencer & the Rare Birds – Under Streetlight Glow
Heidi Spencer and the Rare Birds latest, Under Streetlight Glow, was deliberately and lovingly constructed. Throughout the album Spencer carefully chooses when and how fill the listeners ears; often deciding that silence is the best way to mark a point…
Festival: Green Man
The Green Man promised magic and he didn’t disappoint. Once again the organisers pulled off the spectacular trick of attracting the friendliest festival crowd to the most laid-back festival there is, while enticing some of the weirdest and most wonderful…
EP: Dharohar Project, Laura Marling & Mumford & Sons – iTunes Live
This brilliantly entertaining EP from Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons and the Dharohar Project is made up of live recordings from their combined set at the iTunes Festival in Camden Roundhouse on the 9th July. The EP opens with two…
Album: The Burns Unit – Side Show
‘Supergroup’ is one of those terms that gets thrown out there all the time. Two or three folks get together from different bands for a side project, and suddenly its a supergroup. Except usually it’s not. Usually it’s not nearly…
EP: Sufjan Stevens – All Delighted People
All Delighted People is a collection of songs as bound to disappoint some as it is to enthuse others, and though it is perhaps mismatched as an album, it is not formed to be one.
Singles round-up: Clinic, Harper Simon, Sleepy Sun
Clinic – I’m Aware Clinic’s I’m Aware is evenly spread across its three minutes of running time. The band hints at its affinity for minor, slightly uncomfortable chords throw a wrench into the natural sense of how a song should…
Live: Mariner’s Children and Tristram
It was a windy night and the sun had begun to sink into the horizon, when a crowd of folk-loving youths sat their bottoms onto the deck of the Tamesis Dock, a boat moored along the south side of the…
Double EP: Twin Sister – Colour Your Life and Vampires With Dreaming Kids
What a sweet prospect this double EP from Twin Sister is. The sleeve of Color Your Life features a dollhouse furnished by lead singer Andrea Estella, fuzzily nostalgic, like an old Polaroid, and the sounds within are appropriately dreamy and…
Festival: Moor Music Fest
I so wanted to get through this review without using the words ‘mini Glastonbury of the north’, but there it is. I’ve gone and bloody done it in the first sentence. The truth is, though, that’s exactly what Moor Music…