indie
joe.muggs
I never really dug Suede. I could hear great pop songwriting in some of their work, but their rampant adoption of Bowie-as-Ziggy-Stardust sonics and vocal tics seemed to be just as representative of Britpop's necrophiliac tendencies as did Oasis's tired Beatle-isms. So I'm slightly puzzled as to why I'm enjoying this record by their singer as much as I am, given that it is almost as retro – albeit in a different way.The soundscape of Black Rainbows is a return to rock after the orchestral stylings of previous solo records, but it belongs to the mid-1980s. In particular there is a Goth Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Brooklyn’s The Drums aren’t wasting time, but they’ve found it hard to keep up. The release of their second album, Portamento, comes just 15 months after their debut. In between the two, they toured relentlessly and lost guitarist Adam Kessler. Their drummer Connor Hanwick has stopped playing with them live. Earlier this summer, they admitted to almost splitting due to artistic differences. But whatever the turmoil, Portamento reveals that little has changed sonically in Drum land.They still sound in thrall to The Smiths, New Order and lower-tier Factory bands like Section 25 and The Wake. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although sadness currently cloaks Norway, the release of Razika’s joyful debut album might raise a few spirits. From Bergen, this all-female four-piece are school friends jointly born in 1991, hence part of the album title. Program 91 is a ska-inflected romp that would’ve been a snug fit for Rough Trade in the early Eighties. Razika weren’t even born then. The other half of the album’s title is inspired by fellow Bergen band Program 81, a ska-inflected new wave outfit formed in 1981. Razika – coined as band-speak for a cute boy - clearly aren’t shy about revealing their inspirations, Read more ...
matilda.battersby
If Pavement fans have recovered from the excitement of last year’s reunion then they may find their pulses racing once more when they hear Stephen Malkmus and the Jick’s new album which is produced by Beck (no less).Mirror Traffic is a pleasant, more laid-back record than Real Emotional Trash, Malkmus’s notably rocky previous offering. Erring on the conventional side, it combines an early-indie sound inviting comparisons with Blur and Grandaddy, with noticeable fine tuning to the Jicks’s quirky and complex musical arrangements for which Beck should probably be credited.At 15 tracks long the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
If Bombay Bicycle Club had been born on America’s West Coast, their music would no doubt soon be all over the soundtrack of the next big teen drama. All the ingredients are there: the artiness, the phlegmatic cool, and the tunes that form a natural soundtrack to people’s lives. That’s Bombay Bicycle Club, the band. The individuals, however, are refreshingly normal. They are more like a bunch of guys you might meet in a student union. At Jack and Ed’s digs in central London, theartsdesk hung out to discuss the new album, rocking out, and how they plan to conquer the States.Jack Steadman and Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Anticon label is a deepy peculiar animal. Around the turn of the millennium, its core members – going by names like Boom Bip, Doseone, cLOUDdEAD, Jel and So-Called Artists – took a nerdy yet intensely psychedelic approach to hip hop, and ended up creating a woozy and out-there sound that prefigured a huge amount of currently hip music. Now that the appallingly named new shifts in stoner music - “glo-fi” and “chillwave” - are opening up the territory between indie and hip hop/dance again, Anticon seems hugely prescient, but with new artists like Son Lux, it seems the label is once again Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Spencer Krug must have problems knowing the name he should adopt. Over the past six years, he’s played with his main band, Wolf Parade, recorded as or with Fifths of Seven, Frog Eyes, Moonface, Sunset Rubdown and Swan Lake. Organ Music not Vibraphone Music Like I’d Hoped is his second release as Moonface, a guise he now reserves for his entirely solo work. Organ Music... is quirky, but worth hearing.
Wolf Parade (nothing to do with Wolf Gang) are often driving, anthemic indie rockers on a line between Animal Collective and Krug’s fellow Montréal dwellers Arcade Fire. Moonface, though, follows Read more ...
Russ Coffey
They’ve called the tour "The Hits - Stripped Back". But they weren’t all hits. More importantly, they weren’t merely stripped back either. They’d evolved. The band’s ability to write quality anthemic indie rock is undeniable. But so is the fact that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish them from a slew of other bands with awkward names and characterful voices, like Feeder or Embrace. Or Elbow. And Elbow have stolen the market share. So where does this leave Athlete? It leaves them taking a step back from the pop game, and getting excited about the sonic possibilities of making music together. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The nominations for the 2011 Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize were announced earlier today. Beyond PJ Harvey and Elbow having won before, nothing wildly surprising cropped up.Here they are:
Adele: 21Anna Calvi: Anna CalviJames Blake: James BlakeElbow: Build a Rocket Boys!Everything Everything: Man AliveGhostpoet: Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy JamPJ Harvey: Let England ShakeKaty B: On a MissionKing Creosote & Jon Hopkins: Diamond MineMetronomy: The English RivieraGwilym Simcock: Good Days at Schloss ElmauTinie Tempah: Disc-Overy
The prize will be announced on 6 September
Kieron Tyler
The French national holiday of 14 July might be marked by parades and fly-pasts in Paris, but here on the Atlantic coast it’s the central date for Francofolies, the annual festival dedicated to French music. La Rochelle hosted its first Francofolies in 1985. Twenty-six years on, the festival remains the premier showcase for Francophone music. This year the bill took in David Guetta’s dance-floor cheesiness, Gotan Project's overhauled tango, actress Mélanie Laurent plugging her recent album and all points in between. A window like no other on the French mainstream, it also showcases up-and- Read more ...
howard.male
Several of my favourite tracks of 2010 were on Tradi-Mods vs Rockers. This was a musically audacious project in which a bunch of Western pop and rock musicians dared to unpick the intricate fabric of some Congolese bands who were already making some definitively funky music of their own. The question that arose while I was reacquainting myself with this double CD yesterday, was how were these mostly cut'n'paste studio confections - made in the absence of the musicians that inspired them - going to be recreated live with the involvement of those very same musicians?I expected it would be a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It’s not so much cultural differences that have hindered Death Cab for Cutie’s UK profile, it’s more the difficulty of making a name when “there just couldn’t be less scandal surrounding the band”. Or so guitarist Chris Walla feels. In the States their beautiful, emotionally muted music goes platinum and is featured in huge shows like the OC. But just as US audiences were hard to persuade of the charms of Pulp or Suede, so Death Cab’s strangely moving introspection has been here, by and large, niche. You’d never have known it, though, from the legions of fashionably dressed devotees at the Read more ...