As a sucker for novels set in the milieu of rock music, I was blown away by Bill Flanagan’s Evening’s Empire, partly because it is completely different to all the others I’ve read. Rather than embedding the reader in a character who is a singer or guitarist in a band, the hero of Evening’s Empire, [...]
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The exuberance of Ted Leo on ‘The Mighty Sparrow,’ the opening track of Brutalist Bricks, the fifth album from Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, is enough to sweep away all those lingering thoughts of the death of rock. This man goes for it! His brand of punk/pop is old-fashioned, somehow a cross between XTC (in [...]
I bought Sisterworld, the fifth album by American three-piece art-rock band Liars, because I’d read the band proclaimed itself ‘free of influences’. And an otherworldly cocktail of rock, post-rock, jazz-rock and chamber pop Sisterworld proves to be. Never conventional, the band takes each song down odd, disjunctive roads, alternating dissonance, guitar squalls, moody melancholia and [...]
Edward Rogers is an oddly positioned singer-songwriter of a type only Britain can produce. On Sparkle Lane, his third album, he pens imaginative, well-arranged songs that straddle folk-rock, Kinks-style pop and Bowie-style glam. One minute the listener is channelling Mott the Hoople in the wonderful title track, the next brings rolling modern folk like the [...]
Tunng is a subtle mix of folky music allied to complex arrangements of imaginative, insistent drumming and brilliant keyboards. Their previous album Good Arrows was whimsical and pleasurable; And then We Saw Land is a step forward, adding to the mix passionate, anthemic moments that seize the listener. Both of the band’s singers, Mike Lindsay and Becky [...]
Electronica and I have had a love/hate relationship, tilted more towards the latter, ever since I saw Tangerine Dream in concert in the 70s. I shun the vapidity of club music and therefore rarely buy electronic artists, but every few months I’m drawn to try my luck once more. I was told Radiohead cited Four [...]
Punk was the shout, the sneer (Johnny Rotten!), the rattling beat, the chorus. Punk is still all of those aspects, but I left it behind after a 70s love affair. Rarely does modern punk call to me, and if it does, the key has to be the melodic content. Melodic choruses drew me to the [...]
Most forays by actors into music are not worth listening to, but the first album from She & Him – actress Zooey Deschanel teamed up with beguiling singer-songwriter M. Ward – was spirited and atmospheric. She & Him are back with Volume Two, with eleven original Deschanel songs and two covers. The sophomore release is as [...]
The end of the Shins felt premature, so when its pivotal member, James Mercer was announced to be working with producer/musician Danger Mouse, loud cheers could be heard. And the fruit of that collaboration, the self-titled release of Broken Bells, has been worth waiting for. Mercer writes nifty, slightly askew alt-pop songs with Stipe-ish, involving [...]
Nineties band James achieved stadium status in their British homelands but are not well-known elsewhere. They disbanded in 2001 and their key member, singer/lyricist Tim Booth put out a memorable solo release. They reformed in 2007 with the fine Hey Ma and have now adopted a calculated approach of releasing over 2010 two mini LPs. The [...]