Laura Marling Page 2

10. Belle & Sebastian - 'Girls In Peacetime'.
A glorious return to top form for Belle & Sebastian. 'Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance' contains all the bands trade mark signatures as well as introducing a few new ones. The generally up beat, playful tone of the album is full of pathos, dark humour and heartfelt musings. This is Belle & Sebastian back to their creative best. With an arty intellect and a wry take on life they have combined some of their most varied musical scores to date with more of their joyous lyrics.

9. Girl Band - 'Holding Hands With Jamie'.
A wake up call that needs to be heard. 'Holding Hands With Jamie' is a shot in the arm; a torrent of musical mayhem and magnificent noise. Distorted and unrelenting, 'Holding Hands..' is an unapologetic onslaught to the senses and a nerve tingling jolt of excitement. A quite brilliant debut.

Continue reading: Andrew Lockwood's Top 10 Albums Of 2015

The nominees have been announced for this year's Brit Awards, which will be presented live in a ceremony on ITV on the 19th February. The annual awards celebrate the year's biggest British music stars, in a competition that is as hotly contested as ever after a thrilling year in music.

Disclosure Could Be About To Get A Lot More Famous With Four Potential Brit Awards Headed Their Way.

Bastille and Disclosure have emerged as the early front-runners after netting four nominations apiece and will go head-to-head in the Mastercard British Album of the Year, British Breakthrough Act, British Single and British Group categories. Though both groups have enjoyed rocketing to success this year, Disclosure and their album Settle may have the edge due to having been also nominated for last year's Mercury Music Prize.

Continue reading: Brit Awards 2014 Nominations: Disclosure, Bastille, Rudimental Emerge On Top

The Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize this week announce the shortlist for it's 12 favourite albums of the last 12 months, albums that it claims are "urgent" and are "reflective" of the evolving sound of contemporary music. Once a haven for alternative acts like Portishead and Gomez, this years awards once again have gone for the most obvious choices and rather than celebrate any "urgent" talent, artists that routinely play on the radio or television have been picked ahead of the Hookworms and Darkstars of the British and Irish music scene.

The Arctic Monkeys are hardly an "urgent" band

The Arctic Monkeys are now a bonafied rock staple, whilst Foals and Laura Marling have each been nominated in the past and are regularly given air time on 6 Music or Jools Holland, etc., not to mention the fact that Marling has been handed a BRIT Award too. As for newcomers Disclosure, Rudimental and Jake Bugg, neither are exactly challenging their respective fields of house, drum and bass and rockabilly, but simply making it more radio-friendly and pop accessible. This isn't a dig either, this is something that all three artists should openly agree with. As for David Bowie; he's David Bowie. Need we say more?

Continue reading: Mercury Prize Shortlist Announced, But Does It Even Matter Anymore?

The Barclaycard Mercury Prize nominations have come round again, designed to celebrate this year's best British musical offerings. Last year we saw Alt-J with An Awesome Wave take home the coveted music industry prize and have since seen them go on from strength to strength with full UK touring and an extensive festival diary as the indie quartet revelled in the exposure the annual awards had brought them and their infectious, enthralling debut.

Last Year's Winners, Alt-J, Benefitted From The Prize.

This year's nominees, as announced this very evening predictably include Arctic Monkey's AM, Disclosure's Settle, David Bowie's The Next Day, and Foals' Holy Fire. However the other choices include Laura Marling's Once I Was An Eagle, Jake Bugg's self-titled debut, and Laura Mvula's Sing To The Moon - all pleasing choices which will make for an interesting and unpredictable race to the 30th October awards show.

Continue reading: Barclaycard Mercury Prize 2013: This Year’s Nominees For Album Of The Year

Laura Marling looks to have made a stunning return with her new album Once I Was An Eagle. The 23 year-old is already onto her fourth album and, if reviewers would have you believe, it could arguably be the strongest in the once Mercury-nominated artist’s suit yet.

Simply described as “a masterpiece” by the Daily Telegraph in their review, other assessments have followed a similar vein. “Recalls Joni Mitchell's landmark Blue in the way she ruthlessly dissects her love life, hunting for emotional satisfaction,” comment Uncut, with Clash Magazine adding “Marling must now be considered one of the greatest singer-songwriters of both her generation and generations before it.”

The 405 comment “Her best album yet; better individual songs may lie elsewhere, but her new record's cohesive nature makes it much more of an adventure than what came before.”

Continue reading: Laura Marling's 'Once I Was An Eagle' Soars With The Critics

A Week In Videos... She might have just wrapped up her Set The World On Fire tour, but the promotional drive for Alicia Keys fifth album Girl On Fire rolls on, with the multi-million selling songstress putting out a video for the third single from the 2012 Billboard number one LP. The video for 'New Day' sees clips of studio-shot footage of Keys dancing down back alleys, interspersed with footage of the star performing live in various instances. Given that her last single Brand New Me reached a meagre 103 at the tale of end of 2012 in America, it's going to be hard for 'New Day' to make much of an impact.

Kurt Vile's Wakin On A Pretty Daze was his most commercially successful album yet, going close to the top 40 in the UK and making 47 on the US Billboards. Yet the American psych-wizard is about more than sales figures, and pleasingly his fifth album also perhaps marks his most accomplished to-date, a record of dreamy soundscapes and hazy Americana tale-telling. Given the woozy nature of 'Never Run Away,' we wonder just exactly what that smoke coming out of the bus at the beginning of the video is...

Continue reading: A Week In Music - Alicia Keys Girl On Fire Promotion Still Going, Cayucas Debut Makes For The Perfect Summer Listen And Latest Michael Jackson Court Case Begins

Albums of Note... David Bowie’s return to the shelves of our local record shops (well, the few that still exist) has been met with a grateful and adulatory fanfare, across the board and it’s been no different here at Contactmusic. Having run out of contemporary influences upon which to draw, Bowie took the old adage that pop will eat itself and made an album to fit. On The Next Day, Bowie largely references himself and his own body of work, recalling his Berlin days, as well as providing an extension of the tracks he released in the nineties.“Assessing how The Next Day sits alongside anything else he's done is irrelevant; an artist who has gone through as many character changes, taken on as many styles and moved through as many eras as he has defies such lazy list making. What can be said is that it is, at this point in time, at this point in his life and career, probably as good a record that David Bowie could've possibly come up with.”

Some of the mystery of Rhye’s cloaked existence has been unveiled and the band’s two components have been revealed as Toronto born producer Mike Milosh and Robin Hannibal of Quadron. They draw comparisons to The XX, partly thanks for Milosh’s falsetto, which led many to believe that it was a woman on vocals. Possibly part of the reason they choose to entitle the album Woman...? “'Woman' is a chilled, tranquil listen but not a boring album by any means. The duo creates songs that fill with distant, mysterious moods. But, it still feels like an intimate album piled high with textured layers.”

Continue reading: A Week In Music - Bowie's 'The Next Day' Album Was Worth The Wait, Sigur Ros Back At Their Spectacular Best, Everything Everything Take Another Step Into The Mainstream With 'Duet'