La Femme: Mystère review – alluring French indiepop
(Disque Pointu)
King Creosote: Astronaut Meets Appleman review – cosmic, earthy and mischievous
Fife singer Kenny Anderson’s breakthrough 2014 album, From Scotland With Love, was essentially a stirring love letter to his homeland. The follow-up continues his creative roll, and recording in the Isle of Mull and County Down has given the album … Continue reading
The Hunna: 100 review – everything but originality
(High Times)
The Parrots: Los Niños Sin Miedo review – garage rock by some excellent mimics
While the rest of us are busy parsing Frank Ocean’s latest opus for meaning, in Spain the dial is firmly tuned to garage rock. Or at least, that’s the impression you get from the country’s two recent musical exports, all-female … Continue reading
Banks & Steelz: Anything But Words review – slick rap-rock, like Interpol meeting the Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang Clan badass RZA and Interpol frontman Paul Banks began writing together in 2011, and this, their eventual album, doesn’t sound unlike what you’d imagine Interpol smooshed with Wu-Tang Clan to sound like. There’s 70s lounge-funk (Conceal), OutKast stylings (Giant) … Continue reading
Glass Animals: How to Be a Human Being review – colourful stories, awkward grooves
Second album syndrome is often characterised by lazy tales of tour boredom. But Glass Animals, the Oxford Alt-J-alikes with more than 200m Spotify streams, have used their time on the road imaginatively. This colourful collage was inspired by stories that … Continue reading
Ed Harcourt: Furnaces review – gently apocalyptic pop
“I wanted to make a record that people can cry, fuck and fight to,” is how Ed Harcourt describes his aim for his seventh solo album. This raises a couple of questions – firstly, what kind of softlad would ever … Continue reading
Slow Club: One Day All of This Won’t Matter Any More review – a musical and artistic stop-gap
Related: The long, hard road to rock’n’roll success: ‘We’re essentially skint’ Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor relocated to Matthew E White’s Spacebomb Studios in Virginia to make their fourth album. While escaping familiar locations has served to align their sound … Continue reading
Benjamin Francis Leftwich: After the Rain review – hushed and hymnal
This York singer-songwriter has been through a lot since his 2011 debut, Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm. He lost his father to cancer, and spent a dark period holed up in his late parent’s old house, trying to destroy himself. … Continue reading
The Moles: Tonight’s Music review – stupidly catchy, off-kilter indie-rock
Like their peers the Chills, the Moles’ gently psychedelic, impassioned indie-rock strayed into the elemental. Now reactivated around Australian founder Richard Davies after interest was rekindled by a 2014 compilation, the band’s first album in 20 years is glorious. With … Continue reading
Of Montreal: Innocence Reaches review – an adventurous shift toward synth-pop
By album number 14 a band might be forgiven for starting to run out of ideas. That can’t be said of Kevin Barnes’s verbose psych-poppers Of Montreal, who if anything are getting more adventurous with age. Innocence Reaches continues the … Continue reading
Thee Oh Sees: A Weird Exits review – cult garage-rockers on pummelling form
John Dwyer’s San Fran garage-rockers Thee Oh Sees have a reputation for being a pitbull of a live band – biting, muscular, a little deranged – which has turned them into a cult property among the cotton bag-carrying indie massive. … Continue reading
Blossoms: Blossoms review – Abba meet Arctic Monkeys
(Virgin EMI)
Dinosaur Jr: Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not review – a brutish soup of sound
The fourth episode of the rebooted Dinosaur Jr show sees our leading men settling into a comfortable mid-season routine. Gnomic titles, introverted lyrics directed at a vaguely defined “you”, and yearning vocals rippling through an extravagantly brutish soup of sound: … Continue reading
Lawrence Arabia: Absolute Truth review – reflections on a reckless youth
There’s a Tim Key-like quality to James Milne’s eviscerating lyricism: “Cursing the time when you were a tart / You really were an arsehole that day”, he sings on Sweet Dissatisfaction, a song that reflects on his youth and recklessness … Continue reading