I like to do this every year, but found myself shocked by the small number of new albums I’ve actually listened to this year.
1) The Twilight Sad – Forget the Night Ahead
Having seen them live as well this year, nothing was going to touch this. A departure from the post-rock/shoegaze of Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen [...]
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At a recording pace of around one album per year since being signed as a solo artist, Frank Turner is definitely an artist for whom I have a fair amount of respect: his punk ethic has not been lost since his change of pace from Million Dead to his folk-rock efforts as Frank Turner. [...]
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This is the only time I have ever even considered reviewing a single, but there’s a more than good enough reason for it: excitement over the 22nd September, Daisy’s (Brand New’s fourth studio album) release. Three years after the excellent The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, which itself was released three years [...]
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I am fully aware that this album was released ten years ago, but I find music anything but ephemeral: the very nature of the CD/vinyl-press permits music to live for as long as it is desired to be played. Now that this pseudo-philosophical point addressing the nature of music and its transience has been [...]
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The Veils MySpace
Finn Andrews is a revelation: throughout the backcatalogue of The Veils’ material, he’s always managed to produce a variety in his vocals pretty much unmatched by their genre’s peers. From warbles to cracking of the voice to animalistic screams, there’s always been that little spice in their music to make them instantly [...]
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Honesty and earnestness: two qualities missing from mainstream music in this current day and age with emphasis being put on what would sell well rather than that which matters: heart and motivation. What we have here is most definitely a return to these ideals of truth in art; coming from a band whose tagline [...]
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People just have to try to bend the barriers of genres of music, don’t they? It makes the job of any would-be music critic infinitely more difficult: you immediately can’t pigeonhole bands to be a complete snob or to express your indie cred anymore. Here, with All the Pictures, a new monster is born: [...]
Even Flowers Kill’s MySpace
You have to love a band who can reference pop (or otherwise) culture, and do it well: Graf Orlock made their entire fame on it. Coventry’s Even Flowers Kill begin, on paper, in very good books with me: with an EP titled in reference to the enigmatic Schrödinger’s Cat and a Fight [...]
Crash Repeat’s MySpace
‘Synthesiser with a predilection for arpeggiated leads seeks like-minded vocalist and overdriven guitar for good company, good fun and maybe more.’
The ungodly combination that this Lonely Hearts ad promises is the conceptual embodiment of Crash Repeat. Trebles meet bass with no room for a middle ground: this breed of electronic experimentation has no [...]
The Winter League MySpace
Instrumental and minimalist music are two genres which are somewhat of a taboo in certain circles: it’s seen by far too many to be the case that music has to be immediate; music has to be loud; music has to be fast. The Winter League pretty much serve to define the veritable [...]
