indie
Kieron Tyler
Lost Harmony is the third album from Norwich to London transplants Sennen. Although they’re pretty much an under the radar band, it’s been made with David M Allen, The Cure’s long-term producer. Their songs have been heard on the soundtracks of One Tree Hill and True Blood. Obviously, they’re doing something right. Steeped in melancholy, Lost Harmony is defined by the insistent “Vultures”, which is about Nikolai Kondratiev, the Russian economist who evolved the concept that capitalist economies are defined by cycles of boom and bust.That the best entry point into Lost Harmony is “Vultures”, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Low don’t really look as though they’re given to ostentatious display. With their black shirts, polished footwear and sensible haircuts, they could be waiting staff in a formal restaurant. One with a lot of dark wood and banquettes. The Hendrix-like squall that preceded last night’s set opener “Nothing But Heart” quickly subsided. These flashes are enough to show how intensely Low’s hidden fires burn.On “Drugs”, Sparhawk sang “I was a child, I was on fire, I stayed alive while all else died”. The fundamental tension at the heart of Low is a battle between intensity and their self-defined Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s two songs into Port of Morrow, the Shins’ first album since 2007’s Wincing the Night Away (and the band’s first to be distributed by a major label, Columbia) and it hits me that what I’m hearing isn’t something I’ve heard before. Sure, the track - “Simple Song” - started streaming on the band’s website back in January with accompanying fanfare, but that isn’t exactly what I mean. It’s more that those first two songs sound like a continuation, and a surprising one at that.When you’ve had any level of investment in a band at all, news of a full-on line-up change never goes over well. While Read more ...
joe.muggs
A mea culpa from me: I never gave Sbtrkt's records the attention they deserved. I always thought they were a capitulation, a softening of the radical developments of the post grime and dubstep generation with more traditional musicality and indie affectations to reach out to a more generalist, NME reading audience... and in a way they are – but, I came to realise, that's not a bad thing, and certainly not cynically done.Having listened to last year's self-titled debut album more thoroughly, it became clear that there is a distinct and often deliciously absorbing character to Aaron Jerome's Read more ...
joe.muggs
Tonight on Channel 4, a new music series begins with a fantastic premise. A group of music obsessives drive around the USA in a London black cab, finding interesting musicians and recording them performing and talking in the back of the cab. Sounds a little bit like the 2008 Stephen Fry in America series, doesn't it? Well maybe, except Black Cab Sessions has been broadcast online since 2007.Watch the Black Cab Sessions trailer:And there's the rub. BCS has now featured hundreds of acts in various cabs, from complete unknowns to top ten-bothering popstars, from gangsta rappers to Brian Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It ended with Annie Clark on her back, being passed around the audience like a volleyball. Scrubbing at her guitar, the squall didn’t stop. As encores go it was pretty memorable, the confirmation that Clark – as St Vincent – has arrived. Earlier in the set she’d remarked that she was last at the Empire four years ago, playing in The National. Now she’s selling it out.Her success, including the appearance of last year's Strange Mercy on many best-of-2011 lists, has come via a circuitous route. Born in Oklahoma and now living in Brooklyn, Clark graduated from high school in Texas and entered Read more ...
Russ Coffey
For those unfamiliar with his work, Stephin Merritt is like a modern-day Cole Porter: prolific, highly camp, and with a genius for beautifully crafted witty three-minute songs. He performs with the 6ths, The Gothic Archies, Future Bible Heroes as well under his own name. However it is with The Magnetic Fields that he has achieved greatest recognition. I'm here to discuss their new album, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, out early next month. Fans are hoping that it might match the brilliance of Merritt's magnum opus, 1999’s triple, 69 Love Songs, where he exhausted every permutation of romance Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Remember Primal Scream’s woozy “Higher Than the Sun”? It’s a fair bet Mauro Remiddi does. His debut album as Porcelain Raft drifts through 10 foggy songs as disconnected, yet warmly melodic, as that era-defining excursion through the ether.Italian born and America-dwelling, Remiddi has been through a few musical incarnations. He’s played klezmer for the Berlin Youth Circus, was pianist for a New York tap-dance show and in the Sixties-ish band Sunny Day Sets Fire. Where he’s landed up is familiar, but still satisfying. As well as nodding towards the rave/indie crossover, he’s got the chillwave Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With 15 songs in just 35 minutes, Field Music’s fourth album doesn’t neatly conform to the prog rock brush they’re usually stroked with. Releasing Plumb exactly two years after its double-album predecessor (Measure) illustrates how methodically Sunderland’s David and Peter Brewis approach their music. Even so, this is a warm, organic album, easy to love, easy to hum and easy to digest.(Measure) was harder to take in, and not just due to its length - its dry production made for a brittle listening experience. Plumb is friendlier on every level, inviting admission. Opening with twinkling Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Laura Veirs may be increasingly seen by some as an “undiscovered gem”, but to others she still comes over a bit too corn-fed to warm to. Of course, the much applauded Year of Meteors and July Flame contain some mighty pretty moments, but there’s also a sense that they belong to a slightly smug American West-Coast eco-culture. But now, recent mother Veirs has released an album of “children’s folk songs,” gaining rave reviews. Would last night's show find her fuzzy and huggable, intimate, or just a little too worthy?When Veirs walked on stage in a “vegan chic” vintage pea-green dress and horn- Read more ...