rescuing musical virtue in distress.
Well, it is the season for the cover song, a time when everyone from the established mainstream music-maker to the reality show, also-ran celebrity…and I use the word celebrity quite wrongly… is crooning out a Christmas tune in an effort to pay for a new wing on their Cheshire manor or perhaps pay off their... Continue Reading →
If this was one of those TV music shows that are all the rage these days this review would actually start with a 4 minute, sob story about how the band recorded this debut album in 1986 and promptly split up prior to releasing it. The video would be underscored with melancholic classical music and... Continue Reading →
The connectivity of modern music that the digital age has ushered in can take you down some wonderful musical rabbit holes. One minute you are bopping about to something familiar, something which you have deliberately sought out and a few cursory clicks and lateral links later and you might find yourself immersed in music three... Continue Reading →
Forgive me for repeating something which tends to raise its head whenever I put pen to paper on behalf of a new Tombstones In Their Eyes record, but it does really get to the heart of what makes them stand out from the rest of the post-punk pack. As the imaginary needle drops on the... Continue Reading →
I Like Trains feel like something that we lost along the musical way. They also feel like something that is more necessary today than at almost any time in recent history. Some of the most interesting musical movements, hip-hop, punk, even rock and roll itself, grew out of disenfranchisement and boredom and such genres embraced... Continue Reading →
There is nothing like kicking off an album with some beguiling and engaging sounds, the sort of musical exoticism which grabs the listener right from the first languorous and luxurious vocal, the first skittering and skewed beat. That’s how you get peoples attention and Bakhchalarda does just that and does it perfectly. A blend of... Continue Reading →
The first track I heard by you guys, “Yesterdays”, reminded me so much of any number of British, post-punk bands that I was surprised to find that you are from the quintessentially American Orange County. Perhaps we can start by discussing the band’s sound and influences? Erick: The West of House “sound” is an interesting recipe of... Continue Reading →
Not heard anything from Folk Devils for around thirty years, so this was a welcome surprise. Big bendy guitars crash in with a wall of dirty but tuneful sound behind. No space for filler in here, just big powerful chords, rhythms and melody. It has a confidence that comes with age and experience. Although the... Continue Reading →
I have always loved Cyborg Asylum’s future nostalgic blurring of time lines. Future because their music always seems to be the soundtrack to some dystopia cataclysm yet to happen, the rallying cry for the under dogs in some yet to come Big Brother, oppressive police state. Nostalgic because whilst pursuing those futuristic visions, they also... Continue Reading →
With a brooding and shrouded bass sound which pulls the listener immediately in at the deep end, Siegfried 1969 is a swirl of gothic and post-punk sonic troupes. Clinical, electronic beats, buzz saw guitars, chilling and obscured lyrics…even if you are fluent in German…explosives dynamics releasing salvos of sonic shards, Cold War allusions, stark European... Continue Reading →
Even by the time that I have written out the band name and track title, I like The Sea At Midnight. A lot! Words are emotive, titles suggestive…or at least they are when in the hands of people who understand their power… and there is something in the scope and poeticism of those nine opening... Continue Reading →
I love the way that I Like Trains begin by showing us the musical engine room before they proceed to bury it in some edgy and energetic musical shards. A Steady Hand kicks off with a motornik groove, a relentless, hypnotic beat punctuated by distant and disturbing depth-charge bass booms, the perfect driving force for the sound-bitten... Continue Reading →
A new album from Beauty in Chaos is always something which generates a lot of excitement. There are not many bands who manage to marry alt-rock swagger, post-punk inventiveness, brooding, gothic overtones and old school rock and roll so effortlessly, certainly none which do so without falling for the usual cliches. And if Michael Ciravolo... Continue Reading →
As the recent brace of songs, “Rose Devoid of Form” and “Everything at Once Forever”, makes clear, The Academy of Sun is equally at home with the heart-aching and cinematic as it is with full on rock ’n’ roll. Perhaps tell me about the bands influences and musical plan of attack? Nick Hudson: We don’t... Continue Reading →
Whilst this latest gem from Brighton’s The Academy of Sun feels like it is wandering through the same sort of territory that Nick Cave has explored from time to time, whereas the emotions our antipodean dark lord builds from err towards the bleak and torn, Rose Devoid of Form uses a more elegant, lilting beauty... Continue Reading →
Although ideas of isolation and abandonment, loneliness and longing have always been subjects explored by musicians, especially those who follow a more alternative path (after all, these subjects don’t lend them self to a particularly perky pop format), the fact that this sophomore release is the product of a band trying to plough their creative... Continue Reading →
It must be a good sign when after years of moaning that music doesn’t have much to say any more, increasingly the songs I find under the pen seem to be increasingly aware, increasingly politically switched on and increasingly using a platform to say something important. The Truth, a single helping to pave the way... Continue Reading →
I often read through the names that a band lists as their inspirations and think, really? It usually happens when presented with young indie bands claiming bands such as Arctic Monkeys to be their main musical touch-stone but who come off sounding like an bad version of The Libertines. It happens when rock bands alluding... Continue Reading →
I know I bang on about this a bit…a bit too much even, but I tend to be a sucker for music which reminds me of my own sonic revels through a post-punk heyday…I guess you never shake off the music of your own formative years. I’m not even talking about music which sounds like... Continue Reading →
If you haven’t fallen in love with The Mystery Plan by the mid point of opening salvo Those Stars, then you really should see a doctor, or perhaps even a psychiatrist. How could you not find everything you need in its drifting textures, louche beats and sultry saxophone? If there was a decent bookshop nearby... Continue Reading →
The fact that we are using the term post-punk as a description tells us one of two things. Either it tells us how concisely the term describes a certain type of music or it suggests that it is so vague a term that it doesn’t have any real use. Actually both are true. The term... Continue Reading →
Although their music has been described as “bedroom pop with an edge,” that does seem quite an understatement as I Am a Rocketship seem to draw together inspirations from far wider than the small, self-contained, world which such a phrase might imply. With a new album, Ghost Stories, on its way, My Nature comes on... Continue Reading →
What makes great music easy to describe through subtle, or not so subtle, name drops which I am about to demonstrate, is not because it is trying to copy what has gone before but because it drinks in its inspirations from the same sonic well-spring. It is easy to hear any number of sonic bed-fellows... Continue Reading →
This album opens with a track that's driven along by pounding tribal drums offering a feel of marching to an unknown destination and an unknown conflict. A new sense of urgency is evident as a vocal line spits out a message that feels like it can no longer be suppressed. These guys have clearly been... Continue Reading →
Sometimes an artist never really finds their own personal voice. This is definitely not the case with The Cravats. Their unique combination of synchronous sax and guitar coupled with the articulate vocal style is as individual now as it was over four decades ago. There are very few bands that can incorporate a saxophone without... Continue Reading →
Psych-Noir? That’s a phrase that I haven’t heard before but it sums up what is going on here perfectly. The first half of the phrase describes Mayflower Madame’s hazy and intense textures perfectly, the second part their dark sonic designs. I’m not sure who first thought of the label but they deserve a medal, probably... Continue Reading →
I’m not quite sure how it happened but I seem to get sent a strangely disproportionate amount of music with a Minneapolis connection come my way. I say disproportionate because I write from a small room in a medium sized railway town an ocean away. Not that geography or distance is really a factor in... Continue Reading →
I think by now we should have discovered a new word to cover music which resonates with the spirit of post-punk. After all, that scene's first stirrings lay more than a lifetime ago but I guess as a useful shorthand for a certain set of sounds and styles, for atmospheric soundscapes which would soon fracture... Continue Reading →
I've said it before and I’ll say it again, “sun-damaged American music” is a pretty apt description of the sound Palm Ghosts make. At once vague and accurate, a description which doesn’t really tell you much going in but which in hindsight is the perfect summation, and Wide Awake and Waiting is another chapter in... Continue Reading →
I have always said that if you want to know the difference between punk and post-punk then just listen to The Membranes. Punk was the short sharp shock which was never going to last and what followed in the fringes was largely either called New Wave or Post-Punk…at least it has been in journalistic hindsight... Continue Reading →