indie
Blk Jks, Moth Club review - Johannesburg’s art-rockers are more straightforward live than on albumThursday, 23 June 2022
Figuratively, “Tselane” is Blk Jks’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Both songs begin quietly and move through passages of turbulence suggesting an impending tempest. Each has a command of dynamics which pulls the listener in, generating anticipation for what... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 71: Sparks, Ibeyi, Amy Winehouse, The Residents, Hanterhir, Astor Piazzolla and moreThursday, 16 June 2022
Summer has arrived outside and sunny sounds are blasting from the speakers at theartsdesk on Vinyl. But not just sunny sounds, to be truthful, also sounds that cover most of the human emotional range, all from plastic discs in varying colours. Check... Read more... |
Album: Foals - Life is YoursWednesday, 15 June 2022
For the Oxford alt-rock mainstays Foals, the past two years brought an anti-climactic pause to a triumphant 2019: their meteoric trajectory had kept pace with their duo of albums, Everything Not Saved Will be Lost Part 1 and 2. The sister albums had... Read more... |
Album: Nick Mulvey - New MythologyFriday, 10 June 2022
In these meta times when everything – EVERYTHING! – is ironic, a smirk to be replayed forever on a screen, the last thing we expect is a hippy, a proper real-life hippy, preaching oneness and love. Even yoga sorts these days mostly go on about... Read more... |
Album: Shearwater - The Great AwakeningThursday, 09 June 2022
The title The Great Awakening is a metaphor for America’s switch from its previous presidential administration to the current: the arrival of a new era and, with it, a fresh phase of life. Emblematic of this is the xenarthran, a type of armadillo,... Read more... |
Bloc Party, Barrowland, Glasgow review - falling back on past glories brings a jubilant responseMonday, 06 June 2022
As Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke noted at one point in this gig, his band have now been visiting Glasgow for nearly two decades. Yet few of the shows played in that 18 year span, which have touched upon nearly all of the city’s main music venues,... Read more... |
Album: Wren Hinds - A Child's Chant for a New MillenniumThursday, 02 June 2022
Side Two of A Child’s Chant for a New Millennium opens with “Wrenbird,” a consideration of whether it’s possible to have a bird’s freedom of mobility. “Anywhere but here,” sings Wren Hinds. He may not be happy where he is, but the accompanying... Read more... |
Album: Yama Warashi - Crispy MoonSaturday, 28 May 2022
Crispy Moon is a musical kaleidoscope encompassing free-jazz skronk, Japanese folk melodies, Krautrock insistence, echoes of Recurring-era Spacemen 3, South African percussion styles and space rock. One is overlain onto another, or there are... Read more... |
Album: Liam Gallagher - C'Mon You KnowWednesday, 25 May 2022
While Britpop was a retrogressive media construct, Oasis were a genuine socio-musical phenomenon (albeit also retrogressive!). And at their heart was, of course, Liam Gallagher, bullishly Manc, sneeringly rude and pugnaciously charismatic, a proper... Read more... |
Tallies, Old Blue Last review - Canadian quintet rejuvenates indie prototypesWednesday, 18 May 2022
Toronto’s Tallies have acknowledged their fondness for Aztec Camera, The Smiths and The Sundays. Add Cocteau Twins into the building blocks, too. Encountering a band so strongly immersed in the back catalogues of familiar names can obscure what’s... Read more... |
Album: Everything Everything - Raw Data FeelTuesday, 17 May 2022
Since their 2010 debut, Man Alive, Everything Everything have dissected the various structures of human relationships, from socio-political to interpersonal, but all in their own experimental art-rock sound.As a result, their recent albums took on... Read more... |
Transgressive Records showcase, The Great Escape, Brighton review - five acts offer intriguing pop alternativesSaturday, 14 May 2022
Onstage at The Old Market in Hove, New York’s Mykki Blanco has been waving around a knot of garlic bulbs as if it were a wand or occult aspergillum. At some point during Blanco’s punchy rendition of 2016 single “Loner”, or possibly the dizzier “... Read more... |
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