Listen to the sounds
“Why are you always writing battle music?” That’s how Joy on Fire bassist and principal songwriter John Paul Carillo said that their saxophonist Anna Meadors described their music when I interviewed the pair last year. In their latest release, Unknown Cities, the jazz-punk trio continues to flex their high-energy battle music muscles and virtuosic technique, […] More
Just a couple of months ago I picked Black Dresses’s Forever in Your Heart as my favourite album of last year. I hadn’t expected to. For a long time I thought The Turning Wheel or Sinner Get Ready would take that spot, but looking back on the year, I decided it was appropriate to go with a more personal […] More
The arc of history has done unfortunate things to Janet Jackson and her legacy. For one of the most relevant artists of the ‘80s and ‘90s, her career suffered a nearly fatal blow when the CBS corporation blacklisted her and her relevance precipitously waned. But at her height, Jackson was a megastar, setting records and […] More
Black Country, New Road’s stock skyrocketed last year with the release of one of the most acclaimed debuts of the year. Their first studio album For the First Time was a bold, carnivalesque and strange offering of art-rock and post-punk; assertive, brazenly awkward and delightfully eccentric; often sounding like you’ve caught Idles in an especially […] More
Where to start?…Neil Young battling Spotify. The #Brokenrecord movement fighting streaming services’ pittance of remuneration. The airwaves filled with more and more identikit music-by-numbers. Into this battlefield strides Paul Draper with the sonic satire bomb that is Cult Leader Tactics. His first since 2017’s Spooky Action and his second full solo record since the acrimonious […] More
Blur aren’t best remembered for their self-titled album.The Britpop pioneers that dominated UK tabloids in the 1990s are better remembered today for their jaunty, spirited, and heavily London-accented songs like “Parklife” and “Girls And Boys”, as well as for their feud with fellow indie-rock juggernauts, Oasis. Despite acquiring critical acclaim at the time and breaking […] More
A new Eels album is always cause for celebration and this, their 14th, finds Eels leader Mark Oliver Everett aka E, re-teaming with writer/producer John Parish for some rock and roll fun on Extreme Witchcraft. For me, Eels have many faces. Sometimes euphoric, sometimes melancholy, sometimes with strings. But me, I like my Eels best of […] More
There is no better introduction to This Mortal Coil—one of my favorite bands of all time—than the quote that graces the top of their page on 4AD‘s website: “This Mortal Coil was not a band, but a unique collaboration of musicians recording in various permutations, the brainchild of 4AD kingpin Ivo Watts-Russell. The idea was […] More
By 1995 Primal Scream were a joke. The poor reaction to the retro 70s rock of 1994’s Give Up But Don’t Give Out gave credence to the running gag that the Scream were just chancers.The theory went that the success of Screamadelica was due to the production by cutting edge DJs like Andrew Weatherall and mixing […] More
Lissie is an American country artist from Rock Island, Illinois. Originally performing in a three-piece band with bandmates Eric Sullivan and Lewis Keller, Lissie amicably branched out alone after moving to Iowa in 2015 from Ojai, California. Lissie has four studio albums, and released her first EP in 2009. This was closely followed by her […] More
Evolution is never more apparent than on Around the Fur by the Deftones. It could be called a coming-of-age album as the Sacramento, California quartet grew into the sound that would define their career. In addition, the music they created elevated the heavy metal genre in ways that can’t be overstated. On Around the Fur […] More
You might not have heard of The Lottery Winners, and that’s OK. Pretty soon though, if they carry on down their current path, stardom beckons. This, their sophomore effort Something To Leave the House For, brings them closer than ever to that stardom. My path to Something to Leave the House For was quite a […] More
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