Author: Nick Gale Page 4
John Legend - Wake Up!
There's a right way and a wrong way to cover bona fide classics. The wrong way involves politely and tastefully recreating the originals note by note, dutifully paying tribute to the song while tacitly suggesting...
Review posted on 8th November 2010
Pet Shop Boys - Ultimate Pet Shop Boys
The quality of The Pet Shop Boys' best moments in unquestionable. Having cottoned on to the potential of dance music fairly early, they reinvigorated British pop with a string of flamboyant singles which counter-intuitively combined...
Review posted on 8th November 2010
Shield Your Eyes - Theme From Kindness
The liner notes to Songs About Fucking, the final album by influential US noise-punks Big Black, credit band members Steve Albini and Melvin Belli with contributing 'guitar skinng' and 'guitar grr', respectively. Shield Your Eyes...
Review posted on 25th October 2010
The Phenomenal Handclap Band - Remixes
The Phenomenal Handclap Band aren't especially phenomenal, and their music doesn't feature too many handclaps. They aren't even much of band, insofar as that term suggests a unified, hermetically sealed group of like-minded musicians; the...
Review posted on 25th October 2010
Mimas - Lifejackets
There are geeky lyrics, there are very geeky lyrics, and then there are the lyrics to 'Application', Lifejackets' opening track. 'Sock-puppetry may be rampart online', begins Mimas vocalist Sn'var Albertsson, bemoaning the number of messageboard...
Review posted on 25th October 2010
Kings Go Forth - The Outsiders Are Back
Kings Go Forth revisit a time before the sound of black American music was radically reshaped by hip-hop's meteoric rise to prominence. They play a form of rhythm and blues far removed from the hyperactive,...
Review posted on 25th October 2010
Dreamend - So I Ate Myself, Bite By Bite
This impressive new release by Black Moth Super Rainbow member Ryan Graveface is a concept album inspired by the jottings of a serial killer. It's a disconcertingly pretty experience, full of delicate touches. Murder has...
Review posted on 25th October 2010
Wyatt - For The Ghosts Within
Robert Wyatt has an extraordinary voice. It is difficult to think of many contemporary singers with his natural talent, let alone singers with a background in popular music. Björk, who collaborated with Wyatt on her...
Review posted on 11th October 2010
Wildbirds & Peacedrums - Rivers
Spousal duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums create an unearthly, ghostly sound which sounds wholly unlike most other contemporary pop music. If you listen to their excellent new album, Rivers - and you should listen to it...
Review posted on 11th October 2010
Richard Thompson - Dream Attic
Richard Thompson is Britain's answer to Neil Young, an uncompromising guitar virtuoso whose often stridently political songwriting is indelibly influenced by his country's folk music. Like Young, Thompson is refusing to go gentle into that...
Review posted on 11th October 2010
Owen Pallett - A Swedish Love Story
There's an unresolved tension at the heart of A Swedish Love Story, the new EP by talented multi-instrumentalist and sometime Arcade Fire collaborator Owen Pallett. On the one hand, Pallett seems interested in writing songs...
Review posted on 11th October 2010
Herbie Hancock - The Imagine Project
Many things are a good idea in theory. Communism. Christopher Nolan films. Going to the pub for 'just one drink'. To this list must be added Herbie Hancock's new album, The Imagine Project. Hancock himself...
Review posted on 11th October 2010
Chickenhawk - Modern Bodies
Leeds-based metallers Chickenhawk are the perfect soundtrack to someone beating you over the head with a blunt object. Or so I like to imagine, anyway. Listening to Modern Bodies, their pleasingly ferocious debut album, one...
Review posted on 11th October 2010
Vessels - White Fields and Open Devices
To say that 'White Fields and Open Devices' is an eagerly anticipated release is something of an understatement. If the Leeds Society for Experimental and Progressive Rock Music produced a calendar, in which every month...
Review posted on 16th July 2008
Suggested
Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over The Country Club Video
Lana Del Rey takes her 60s vintage aesthetic to the extreme with the video for new single 'Chemtrails Over The Country Club'.
Thom Yorke, Garbage and more react to disastrous visa negotiations
As negotiations continue, it's clear that the UK government doesn't have everyone's best interests at heart.
