indie
Kieron Tyler
The waiting room is a despondent place. Wherever it is a staging post for is not bringing its occupants delight. Unsurprisingly, as it is by the perennially sombre Tindersticks, The Waiting Room is a grey-hued album which does not suggest imminent rescue from this predicament. After a brief rendition of the theme from Mutiny on the Bounty, the ensuing 10 tracks set lyrics of estrangement, loss and rootlessness to musical settings which could soundtrack a penumbral nightclub conjured by David Lynch.The album's resemblance to a soundtrack is unsurprising. Tindersticks have composed for Claire Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Originally available on cassette only, Odd Nosdam's Trish has now become the producer and former member of hip-hop pioneers cLOUDDEAD's first release for the Sonic Cathedral label. With six tracks coming in at just under half an hour, it falls into the hinterland between EP and album – a kind of musical novella. This means that there are certain constraints at play here, yet the shortened format is, in reality, a strength. It allows for a particular continuity of style and a cohesive tone, which lends the songs a tangible story arc – something that feels entirely fitting for a work in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Is language a barrier to international recognition? Is English necessary to make waves worldwide? Musicians from the African continent and South America regularly perform in their native tongue beyond the borders of their home countries. But often they are – rightly or wrongly – marketed or pigeon-holed as world music, a branding which allows for eschewing the Anglophone. The always problematic label of world music can be and is debated endlessly, but one thing is certain: for Scandinavia, most internationally successful music is delivered in English.Of course, after setting quirky micro- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Choosing an album of the year is an exacting process. For an album to be arresting, it either has to come as a bolt from the blue or build on what’s come before in a way which represents an identifiable artistic development which takes things to new level while saying something fresh. Holding patterns and restatements of default settings will never have an impact, especially if they speak of or to comfort zones.Alina Orlova’s third album, 88, is arresting, a bolt from the blue and represents identifiable artistic development. Boxes ticked then. More importantly, it is also the album which has Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The news that Lush have reformed didn’t come as surprise. Their comparable contemporaries Ride and Slowdive had also done so over the past couple of years, and My Bloody Valentine – an influence looming over all three – returned in 2007 after over a decade’s abscence. Unlike the others, Lush, who were on 4AD rather than Creation, have reissued their complete catalogue as a box set during the run-up to re-hitting stages next May. Chorus has the potential to eclipse the reappearance as it doesn’t edit history like a one-or-so hour live concert.With Lush, editing is probably necessary to make a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any Christmas album worth its salt draws from the classics. Versions of, say, “We Three Kings”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Silent Night”, “Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!” and “The Little Drummer boy” are compulsory. What is not so inevitable is how these musical and seasonal chestnuts are tackled. All five songs are covered on Lit Up: Music for Christmas, and all five sound like they never have before.Astrocolor are from Canada. The five-piece from Victoria, British Columbia formed specifically to make a Christmas album like no other. Want a Massive Attack-style “We Three Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After opening with a flurry of wobbly, woozy, Durutti Column-ish guitar, A Different Life travels through nine distant, foggy ruminations which suggest dissociation. Titles like “Far Apart”, “It’s Getting Better”, “Dive” and “Drive-by” posit Olivier Heim as a songwriter displaced from the day-to-day. And, atmospherically, his debut album reinforces the impression. With his sigh of a voice, it’s clear Heim’s music mirrors his moods. Indeed, on “Ocean”, he sings of a sleepy feeling he thought was left behind.A Different Life makes its case with sparse instrumentation: the treated guitar to the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The attack is relentless. Its power pummels like a gale. The 2015 model Mercury Rev begin their set at Iceland Airwaves as they meant to finish. Never has this band been so forceful, so kinetic. Yet their trademark balance of filmic drama and delicate melody was not sacrificed during this convincing revitalisation. On stage at Reykjavík’s Harpa concert hall on the festival's second day, Mercury Rev set a bar so high it sowed seeds suggesting nothing could top this. If they are playing, see them.Mercury Rev were performing in the wake of the release of The Light in You, their first album for Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Levitation: Meanwhile GardensIf Meanwhile Gardens had been issued as it was meant to be in 1993, it would not have had an easy ride. The band itself was falling apart. Founder member and former House of Love guitarist Terry Bickers had said on stage that May that the band was “a lost cause” and “we've completely lost it”. He left, the album was not released and, with a reconfigured line-up, Levitation limped on before splitting in autumn 1994.That wasn’t their only problem. The contemporary context in which they operated was changing and also unforgiving. The weekly music press were Read more ...
Russ Coffey
On record, Cat aka Chan Marshall is the quintessence of hip. From art-rock to blues, her vocals are cool and effortless. Live, however, things have been notoriously inconsistent. Google “Cat Power live”, and you will find a catalogue of stage meltdowns. Even her Wikipedia entry tells tales of drunken rants and abuse of fans. And yet for every gig disaster, there’s another rave review. When it comes to a Chan Marshall gig, it seems you pays your money and you takes your chances. As I queue up outside the huge Victorian St John-at-Hackney Church the moon is shining and fans are chatting in Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Back when this was the plain old Brixton Academy, before Britpop, before New Labour, before the world wide web had weaved its way into our homes, before the war on terror, before the nebulous notion of ‘content’ had yet to ruin everything and devalue everyone, I saw Ride play a gig here. It was ace.Tonight, it seemed as though everyone who had been there that night was back: older, wider and balder perhaps (the ratio of men to women was roughly that of a pre-suffragette parliamentary cabinet), but with the anticipation of a child on Christmas Eve. It’s a heritage gig of course – let’s not Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title Tape Hiss instantly telegraphs a dissatisfaction with today’s digital world and, fittingly, the all-analogue second album from Rotterdam’s Rats on Rafts could soundtrack a half-remembered Eighties evening taking in a bill of Britain and New Zealand’s most singular post-punk survivors. Their musical inspirations ring through loud and clear. But – and it's a massive but – these Lownlanders do it better and more ferociously than any of their forebears.Most prominent in the mix are the two-step swing of early “Pink Frost” Chills and the unwavering rolling crescendos of “Going up” and “ Read more ...