Today is the birthday of one of the most melancholy, beautifully-spirited men in the history of the world to date. Singing Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett a merry ditty to celebrate the occasion would be profoundly inappropriate, so instead we’ll…
Obituaries are quite clearly the best part of the newspaper. Why? Because you get a short and easily digestible bit of history, written by a person with actual knowledge of the topic, and you always learn something new. It’s perhaps…
Costello’s angry, sad and thoughtful reaction to the Falklands War is simply one of the best songs ever composed. Originally written in 1982 for Robert Wyatt, whose politics and guileless vocals offered rawness and authenticity, it is in Costello’s own…
Annie Dressner sings deftly-told stories with a comforting love of the everyday. East Twenties opens with ‘Heartbreaker’, settling old scores with nostalgia and forgiveness: “But I won’t be back again, no I won’t be back again”. ‘I Can’t Forget’ deals…
This self-titled EP from Anna Lena & The Orchids is full of doomy beauty; they cite influences as diverse as PJ Harvey and Grizzly Bear, but ‘See It In Black’ reminds me of Radiohead, in that its creepiness shrouds an…
We all know not to judge a book by its cover, and yet we do it anyway. If you were coming into this blind, you might imagine a band named Flutes, singing a song named ‘Kilburn’, might be a group…