Walking into a damp, post-industrial yard in Birmingham under a blanket of grey sky was quite the opposite of what I had envisioned when attending a concert helmed by Brian Wilson, musician-auteur of California pop balladeers The Beach Boys. He was also accompanied by ex-Beach Boys, Al Jardine, Ricky Fataar,...
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Libraries are a place of serenity. They are a cultural hub where people delve into works of literature, learning about common histories and contemporary issues, or getting lost in stories of worlds beyond ours. They’re a sacred space of quiet meditation – so the last place where you would expect,...
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Our writers present their contenders for best indie and alternative album of the year. A Crow Looked at Me – Mount Eerie “Death is real / someone’s there and then they’re not / it’s not for singing about / it’s not for making into art”. The first line croaked from...
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The recent news of Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famers, Radiohead, suing dream pop enchantress Lana Del Rey for the rights to her track ‘Get Free’ is just another pin-drop in the bloody business of copyright. This war over creativity can be dated back to the late 70s to early...
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In the era of on-demand streaming, it seems the traditional studio album is under attack. For millennials, walking to the local music store, picking up a few LPs, before going home and dropping the needle on the vinyl, or sticking a CD in a Walkman, seems like an energy-burning waste...
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There are periods of time in anyone’s life where you meet a crossroad. The emotional turmoil that comes with this testing moment is captured poignantly in MASSEDUCTION, celebrated indie queen, Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent)’s fifth studio album. After dating model and actress Cara Delevigne for two years, it seems...
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It seems too much of a coincidence that the pioneering Canadian post-rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor announced the title of their sixth album as Luciferian Towers, just two months after the terrifying, hellish inferno of Grenfell Towers. This notion of hell engulfing the vulnerable residents of Grenfell is so...
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