alternative
Album: X - Smoke & FictionThursday, 01 August 2024
X, although beloved of music journalists, are one of American punk’s most under-acknowledged. They took a tilt at fame in the mid-Eighties with the radio-friendly Ain’t Love Grand album and its lead single “Burning House of Love”, but it wasn’t to... Read more... |
Album: Wytch Pycknyck - Wytch PycknyckFriday, 21 June 2024
Out on the perimeters where there are no stars, in a void full of bong-smoke and synesthetic noise… there, in a greasy biker hovel full of gigantic amps, there live Wytch Pycknyck. Some say that place is called Hastings. Whatever it’s called, this... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 84: Ibibio Sound Machine, Dave Clarke, Eliza Rose, Billy Idol, Bodega, Mui Zyu and moreWednesday, 12 June 2024
VINYL OF THE MONTHAriel Sharratt & Matthias Kom Never Work (BB*Island) + Ella Ronen The Girl With No Skin (BB*Island)Two offbeat albums from the uncategorisable Hamburg label BB*Island. They are home to the literary indie outfit The Burning Hell... Read more... |
Album: Bat For Lashes - The Dream of DelphiWednesday, 29 May 2024
Natasha Khan’s musical career has always explored the artier end of pop. Her latest album, her sixth and first in five years, is more akin to the soundtrack work she did with Swiss composer Dominik Scherrer on BBC spook-thriller Requiem in 2018 than... Read more... |
Album: Twenty One Pilots - ClancyFriday, 24 May 2024
If there is one positive of the past decade, it must be the growing openness with mental health and wellbeing. Whether in the films we watch or music we listen to, there is much less of a stigma in addressing anxiety, depression, and mental health... Read more... |
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rockers deliver a whopperMonday, 13 May 2024
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok, 1989), boasts a whopping guitar riff. Keys-player Adam Mole, his ushanka cap’s ear-covers flapping, leaps onto his seat, waves his synth aloft. Frontmen... Read more... |
Album: EYE - Dark LightWednesday, 01 May 2024
Skirting along the peripheries of doom metal, unbeknownst to almost everyone, there existed a band called Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard. Hailing from Wrexham, Wales, they created four albums that stand alone in their originality, combining massively... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 83: Deep Purple, Annie Anxiety, Ghetts, WHAM!, Kaiser Chiefs, Butthole Surfers and moreTuesday, 16 April 2024
VINYL OF THE MONTHLondon Afrobeat Collective Esengo (Canopy)The weather has not been kind to the UK lately, pelting it daily with endless drizzle and gloom. So wrap your ears around this, a mini-album that will infuse any room with blazing sunshine... Read more... |
Album: Nia Archives - Silence is LoudMonday, 08 April 2024
At 24, Bradfordian Nia Archives has already clearly marked out her musical territory.While many of her Gen Z contemporaries have embraced the rave, jungle and drum’n’bass sounds of the early-mid 1990s, she’s done it more wholeheartedly than most:... Read more... |
Album: The Jesus and Mary Chain - Glasgow EyesWednesday, 20 March 2024
Jim and William Reid’s musical trajectory has been extraordinary. They started out by out-punking punk with terrifying noise barrages and wilfully clumsy three-chord thrashing, but quickly revealed a deep love of classic pop song structures which... Read more... |
Album: Julia Holter - Something in the Room She MovesSaturday, 16 March 2024
Julia Holter has created a long line of albums that trade on sophisticated poetry, both lyrical and musical, and her latest, perhaps the most adventurous of all, inhabits a world where nothing is certain, narratives are disjointed, and the... Read more... |
Album: Kim Gordon - The CollectiveThursday, 14 March 2024
Some icons sit back and bask. Kim Gordon does not. She has occasionally intimated that her New York cool and relentless work rate may be down to a smidgeon of imposter syndrome, even after all her years on the frontline. Whatever the truth of it,... Read more... |
