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Album: Perfume Genius - GloryThursday, 27 March 2025
I can’t stop reading and re-reading the review copy I got of a new book, out next week. Liam Inscoe-Jones’s Songs in the Key of MP3: the New Icons of the Internet Age is one of those books where you’ll find yourself shocked that it didn’t... Read more... |
Album: Doves - Constellations for the LonelyThursday, 27 February 2025
Doves really are quite prog rock aren’t they? It’s never really leapt out at me before, probably because I’d always thought of them as brooding indie first and foremost.There are elements of things like spaghetti western soundtracks, Scott Walker... Read more... |
Album: Squid - CowardsSaturday, 08 February 2025
Brighton band Squid are not in the business of straightforward. Combining jazz chops with a sensibility that’s at once post-punk, prog and avant-garde, their music is wilfully tricksy. Yet it does groove, upon occasion, it does funk. Tunes do pop in... Read more... |
Album: ALT BLK ERA - Rave ImmortalSaturday, 25 January 2025
The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far back in time that what remains, for those under 40, is an idea, a meta myth. It is one that ALT BLK ERA embrace. Where the Nineties was a smorgasbord of futurism, vanguard electronic... Read more... |
Album: Tunng - Love You All Over AgainWednesday, 22 January 2025
This is Tunng’s ninth album, their first in five years, and marks their 20th anniversary by consciously going full circle to the gentle sound sculpture and folk melody of their earliest work. It is also thrown into fascinating relief by... Read more... |
Album: Kele - The Singing Winds Pt. 3Friday, 17 January 2025
Of the big UK indie bands of the 00s wave, Bloc Party were always the most austerely art-rockish. Where Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Franz Ferdinand all to some degree or other had a dose of the vaudevillian and a bit of party “woohoo!”, BP adhered way... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: Meemo Comma - Decimation of ISaturday, 14 December 2024
I don’t really want to talk about this year. Genuinely.It’s been so horrific on the macro scale with deranged Fascism and the effects of rampant and undeniable climate change looming everywhere you look – and on the personal level I’ve been been... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: Amelia Coburn - Between the Moon and the MilkmanFriday, 13 December 2024
I’ve known for some time that Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom’s Never Work is my Album of the Year. This lividly witty, no-filler take-down of workplace servitude arrived on vinyl in May. The creation of two Canadian indie-folkies (from The... Read more... |
Vampire Weekend, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - a mixture of brilliance and self-indulgenceTuesday, 10 December 2024
When Vampire Weekend arrived onstage they numbered only three and were bunched together at the front with a large curtain draped behind them, obscuring their backdrop. By the time this marathon set ended two and a half hours later, they’d more than... Read more... |
Album: Duster - In DreamsFriday, 06 December 2024
There’s a lot of anger at algorithm-driven music discovery around – a lot of it justified, as the big platforms push the already-big acts and lowest common demoninator slop is aided in rising to the top. But we can’t talk about the topic without... Read more... |
Katy J Pearson, Saint Luke's and the Winged Ox, Glasgow review - warm-hearted songs to banish the coldThursday, 05 December 2024
'Tis the season for all manner of bugs, colds and illnesses. One had befallen Katy J Pearson, who struck an apologetic note after the night’s first number to say she had been unwell all day and was going to do her best to get through the gig. That... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 87: Roots Manuva, Bogdan Raczynski, Songhoy Blues, The Special AKA, Jhelisa, Tina Turner and moreTuesday, 03 December 2024
VINYL OF THE MONTHBlood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)When death metal takes LSD it’s quite a thing. Whether this band have done acid or not, the output of Colorado's Blood Incantation feels that way on their fourth album. Each side... Read more... |
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