garage
Kieron Tyler
The Zakary Thaks: It’s the End – The Definitive CollectionGalloping with the urgency of a sweat-flecked horse running a steeplechase, the choppy guitar riff takes early Kinks raunch and filters it through a testosterone-driven sensibility that won’t let up. The drums are unremitting. Then, a solo guitar peels off a berserk fistful of notes which Dave Davies would have been proud of. A key change raises the intensity level even higher. And then, at just over two minutes, the relentless performance grinds to a halt. Sixties garage rock at its finest, “Bad Girl” is 126 seconds of Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If you’ve ever found the idea of “cock rock” to be unnecessarily gendered, then the debut album from Ex Hex – an all-female trio who, between them, have created the best 35 minutes of ballsy rock 'n' roll I’ve heard since Sleater-Kinney’s “The Fox” – is for you. If you haven’t, and you’re just looking for something new to listen to that’s uncomplicated and up-front that will blow the cobwebs out from between your ears, then Ex Hex is also for you. And if you’ve been struggling to find a record that would match the giddy girl-rock high you got the first time you listened to Wild Flag’s first Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The story is a familiar one: four lads rattling through three-minute garage rock songs full of sweary, lovelorn couplets. With the exception of the name (a tribute, apparently, to a busker that frontman Van McCann met as a child) there’s little to set Llandudno four-piece Catfish and the Bottlemen apart on paper - but there’s something about their debut album that makes me smile. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, making it the perfect length for my walk home from work, The Balcony is the aural equivalent of orange squash: drunk too often it tastes cheap and a little bit sickly, but Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Guy and Howard Lawrence, brothers from Reigate, Surrey, aged 22 and 19 respectively, have become one of the hottest acts in British pop. They have done this by dint of being the figureheads of a genuine garage-house revival. Clubland has been embracing its goofier side for a good while, the macho wob-wob assault of much late period dubstep or the Guetta-esque trance-house cheese endemic in American “EDM”. Disclosure, on the other hand, recall the pared back, soulful sound of Chicago house in its earliest, purest form, amalgamated with a large dose of south London’s well-dressed two-step Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There must be something quite frustrating about being a Stroke in 2013, assuming you just want to get on with the business of making music without constantly being reminded that you are part of a band once labeled the biggest in the world by the music press. It’s no wonder they aren’t giving interviews around the release of their fifth album, even if they’ve now pretty much outlived every magazine that once put them on the cover. The thing is, the Strokes have eschewed the simplicity of their debut on every release since, which is why the new wave-y synths and 80s influences on their latest Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Blue Nile: A Walk Across The Rooftops, HatsGraeme ThomsonThe Blue Nile occupy a unique spot in the musical landscape. Formed in 1980 by Glasgow University graduates Paul Buchanan, Paul Joseph Moore and Robert Bell, four albums in 30 years suggests a certain neurotic creative sensibility which resulted in a pretty slim legacy but served the music well.From their first single – 1981’s “I Love This Life”, included on these expanded reissues – to their last album High, in 2004, a dedicated and deliberate artistic ethos has driven the music. Aesthetically, there is something immensely pleasing Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Growing up in public is never easy. After all the attention that The Vaccines attracted with their post-Strokes smash-and-grab debut What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? they have plenty to prove with their follow-up. Do they duplicate the Ramones-meets-Ronettes-in-the-Hadron-Collider template or go for something different and sophisticated? Well, they’ve got a new look, ditching the leather for denim and growing their hair, and the sequel certainly sounds different, but whether it is more sophisticated is another matter entirely.Come of Age is a tremendously easy album to like but a hugely Read more ...
joe.muggs
This month sees an audacious attempt to showcase British dancehall music, when the Cargo venue in Shoreditch hosts the multi-artist revue Showtime!. The Heatwave collective have brought together vocalists from various UK underground scenes, linked by a strong influence from the high-energy Jamaican sounds of the past 30 or so years. While many of the artists involved have found success in crossover scenes like rave, jungle, grime and garage, the appeal of dancehall itself (also known by the overlapping terms bashment and ragga) has traditionally been restricted to predominantly black Read more ...
joe.muggs
Dubstep is everywhere – and if you will excuse a little self-promotion I have, in my small way, helped this state of affairs come about. The bass-heavy, rhythmically exploratory and very British electronic dance music genre has now – via Magnetic Man and Katy B – proved it can produce bona fide top-10 hits, and it has become the de facto sound of every summer festival to boot, while still keeping both feet in the underground clubs from whence it emerged.Watch the video of "Katy on a Mission" by Katy B:
Regular readers of theartsdesk will know that I have written extensively about the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Today Rinse FM, London's leading pirate radio station, announced it has been granted a legal broadcast licence after 16 years of illicit transmissions. It's almost impossible to overstate how potentially momentous this event is for the UK's most vibrant and promising music scenes, and what opportunities it presents for artists, personalities and record labels ranging from the deep and experimental to the most flagrantly commercial. From the rumbustuous, teen-friendly fun of Scratcha's breakfast show to the experimental electronic jazz and funk of Alex Nut at Saturday lunchtime to various hard Read more ...
joe.muggs
For some people, dubstep has an identity problem. Its suburban origins and recent global spread, its propensity for hybridity, the relatively genial nature of the scene, and perhaps worst of all its popularity with – whisper it – students lead some commentators to regard it with suspicion. A common attack is to compare it unfavourably with either its antecedent jungle (the wild polyrhythmic early-mid 1990s precursor to drum & bass), or its first cousin grime (the fearsomely jagged, lyrically ultra-violent sound of London's pirate radio stations in the first part of this decade): next to Read more ...