You can be forgiven for having never heard of Straight Lines; despite having supported the likes of InMe and Kids in Glass Houses, there has been virtually no hype generated around the release of their debut album, Persistence in This Game. However, just like other products of Pontypridd’s fertile music...
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As soon as the album begins the haunting synth of ‘Before Destruction’sets the stage for Spoon’s latest journey through sound. Unfortunately the arrhythmic transitions and sense of déjà vu make the album feel fractured and prosaic. In their past six albums the band had moved past their likening to The...
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The current British music scene is fertile ground, and British youth culture, for want of a better metaphor, is its manure. All the rallying and raging against Cowell’s stale television formats aside, the Facebook Generation is an exciting bunch. The tribal divisions of the Nineties and early Noughties are now...
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In the last issue I was imploring you all to take notice of John Hughes as one the greatest influences on modern music. _Teen Dream_ by Beach House is yet another album which evokes the hazy romance of your teenage years, as the title suggests, with each song sounding like...
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Protection Racket’, the first single and opening song of _The Shadow of an Empire_, would have you believe that Fionn Regan has undergone some kind of musical metamorphosis. The truth is he hasn’t, at least not entirely. ‘Protection Racket’ is probably the new album’s most complete departure from his folk-orientated...
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Propelled to the dizzying heights of stardom through the viral success of their endlessly parodied treadmill video for the song ‘Here It Goes Again’, Ok Go are now releasing their third album. After having apparently exhausted the standard formula for catchy, cheery and hook-driven power-pop on their previous two records,...
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Vampire Weekend probably shouldn’t be famous. Four implausibly preppy kids from New England with a penchant for African music, songs about punctuation and Peter Gabriel does not usually make for a great listen. However 2008’s Vampire Weekend was an uncommonly good debut album. Instantly likeable, it made the band a...
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Jasjit's midweek blog looks at the possibilies on offer to one of Spain's brightest young talents, as well as reflecting on the Euro 2012 qualification draw.
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This isn’t about us. The greatest pop reconfigures your nervous system, implants false memories, but always exceeds you: it gives us other narratives, other untold-of possibilities, other worlds, that remain inside us like ghosts. The expression Kate Bush achieved on Hounds Of Love is intensely personal, even esoteric, and the...
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As this is an article in the music section you may be wondering why I am writing about John Hughes. John Hughes was one of the most successful commercial filmmakers of the 80s and 90s. However I was extremely struck when his death was announced in August, that so few...
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Jealous is an understatement. Pretty much every member of Rolo Tomassi is younger, hotter, and more talented than your correspondent – vocalist/keyboardist James Spence recounts how, the last time they played The Flapper, all but two members were under 18, and left in the parking-lot. This time around, he and...
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Tommy T is best known as Gogol Bordello’s Ethiopian bassist. Along with his Abyssinia Roots Collective band, Mr. T has spent two years perfecting his debut solo album The Prester John Sessions. It is somewhat of a departure from the theatrical ‘gypsy punk’ noise we are used to hearing from...
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When Motion City Soundtrack finally signed to a major label in 2006, their fans could only watch and wait as the band started work on what should have been their biggest album to date, and three years later My Dinosaur Life just doesn’t quite deliver on the promise they seemed...
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