indie
Lisa-Marie Ferla
At recent live shows, Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn has taken to describing the band’s current lineup as the best it’s ever been. Boosted to a six-piece by the return of Franz Nicolay on keyboards, the Hold Steady of the band’s latter-day London residencies has been well worth the annual 800-mile round-trip: celebratory; poignant; communal; joyous. Thrashing Thru the Passion takes all of these moods, combines five of the tracks released digitally over the past 18 months with five new ones, and the result is the band’s tightest and most fun album since 2008’s Stay Positive.“Denver Haircut” Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The timing seemed odd. Sigrid is internationally successful. She’s Norway’s highest-profile musical ambassador since a-ha. Yet instead of headlining at 2019’s Øya Festival, she hits the stage at 6.45. Has she been demoted in favour of Tame Impala, who are given the final slot at 9.30?Then, as the crowd begins gathering in the natural amphitheatre before the Amfiet stage in the Tøyen park in Norway’s capital, it becomes clear. The timing recognises that some of her younger fans might not usually be up at 10 or later. Sigrid’s fan base is multi-generational, with her youngest admirers around Read more ...
Ellie Porter
If you’ve been paying attention, you might have already heard most if not all of Bon Iver’s curiously named i,i album – weeks before its physical release on August 30. The band debuted two tracks (“Hey Ma” and “U (Man Like)”) at London’s All Points East festival back in June, and since then they’ve been dropping videos, teasers, singles and unrelased tracks all over the place. “Listening parties” on 7 August preceded the album’s official digital release on the 9th, with tracks popping up on Twitter and Spotify throughout the following day.That certainly whipped up a lot of excitement among Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
With their claustrophobic melodies and cryptic lyrics, The National are not the most obvious of choices for a summer evening. But then, The National of 2019 are not the same band. On recent album I Am Easy to Find, frontman Matt Berninger’s signature baritone is often on the periphery, while female voices take the lead. Three of those collaborators - Mina Tindle, Eve Owen and Kate Stables of This Is The Kit, fresh from her opening set - joined the band’s seven-piece touring line-up for two shows in Glasgow, performing their own parts from the album as well as standing in on parts originally Read more ...
joe.muggs
Founded in 1998, the Los Angeles based Anticon collective has become one of the most curiously individual of 21st century groupings. Taking the wordiest and nerdiest tendencies of hip hop – notably the slam poetry-informed tongue-twisting of fellow Californians like Freestyle Fellowship and Blackalicious – and the wordiest and nerdiest tendencies of electronically enhanced psychedelic indie as their starting points, they built a world of introspection and frazzled wordplay that they still inhabit to this day via several dozen collaborative and individual projects.Why? was originally the stage Read more ...
Owen Richards
Rock ‘n’ roll. That’s what was promised. It was emblazoned on the organ for all to see. And if that visual guarantee was too subtle, the set began with “Rock 'n’ Roll Star”. Only, despite the swagger, Liam Gallagher doesn’t really live up to the promise live. It’s loud enough, and the songs talk the talk, but this balmy night in Malta appeared to be just another day in the office for the former Oasis frontman.That’s not to say the evening wasn’t enjoyable. In fact, for anyone half-interested in music during the 90s, it’s nearly impossible not to grin ear to ear during the opening strains of “ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s not every artist who performs “living funerals” along the way as she tours. Then again, American singer Emily Cross is far from the average rocker. Cross Record was previously Cross and her husband Dan Duszynski, who were also both in the slowcore indie “supergroup” Loma. However, this third Cross Record album was made solo, after a move to Mexico following her divorce, also alongside newfound sobriety. It is a more direct, thoughtful creature than its predecessors, yet musically even more floaty and spectral.The default setting for the album is hazy tone music speckled with twinkling Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Music can rile in a way that other artistic forms tend not to. It’s perfectly possible for people to take a dislike to someone they’ve never met based on no more than a Spotify playlist. Take any successful band and you’re guaranteed to find people who despise them for the heinous crime of making pop music that they don’t much care for. Kaiser Chiefs are one such band and the ire they draw from some quarters intensified after frontman Ricky Wilson’s tenure on TV talent show The Voice. All of a sudden indie credibility – whatever that is – was out of the window and he was Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Finding snapshots to characterise Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign and its aftermath is a tall order. There are so many, and assembling them could result in a wearying cavalcade of the all-too familiar. Whether in book form – such as Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury – or film – say, the new Steve Bannon documentary The Brink – the net result is largely to validate existing viewpoints. Such well-trodden ground begs for new approaches.With the Trump-themed 45, Field Music’s David Brewis reassumes the School of Language persona he last adopted in 2014. Over 10 tracks and 33 minutes, he has Read more ...
Owen Richards
Oh to be inside the head of Wayne Coyne. The frazzle-haired frontman has always been an enigma, persistently quirky, morally dubious, and undeniably fascinating. Perhaps King’s Mouth offers our best chance yet to get in there – the album is an accompaniment to his art installation in which visitors enter a giant metallic head. Rather on the nose for a metaphor, but still a hell of an invitation.King’s Mouth is as conceptual as an album gets: a fairytale about a giant baby that becomes king, sacrifices himself for the city, and becomes a monument. Full marks for imagination, the medieval Read more ...
Katie Colombus
It’s a rare thing that musicians sound better live than they do on Spotify. But Florence Welch sings a note perfect set – even when jumping up and down like a pogo stick, whirling and spinning, or sprinting along the front of the stage to meet fans.Shining with androgynous, enigmatic beauty, she opens with the dramatic “June”, the line “hold on to each other” sung with gravitas as she stands on a tree-cloaked stage beneath the open sky. It’s a message that resonates from the onset – you can feel it, the connection with her hometown audience – the same way Flo seems to be feeling the crowd Read more ...
Owen Richards
With the fabled fields of Glastonbury on the horizon, The Killers chose the equally mythic Cardiff Castle as their practice run. While Stormzy was making history on the Pyramid Stage, the Welsh capital played witness to a precision-engineered pop-rock spectacular, complete with pyros and an extravagant light show. Well, if you can’t make history, make memories.They began big with a one-two punch of first-album bangers. “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” led straight into “Mr Brightside”, a power play to drop their generational lads anthem so early, but it mainlined adrenaline straight through the Read more ...