punk
Kieron Tyler
“A band you’re gonna like, whether you like it or not.” The proclamation in the press ads for the New York Dolls’ debut album acknowledged they were a hard sell.At this point, in July 1973, the band was a New York phenomenon. There had been an anti-climactic brush with the UK in October and November 1972, some Boston shows and one-off dates in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but otherwise they had played only to audiences in the city and the nearby boroughs in which they had formed.If wider audiences were “gonna like” proto-punk glam outfit the New York Dolls, it needed more than what they had done so Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far back in time that what remains, for those under 40, is an idea, a meta myth. It is one that ALT BLK ERA embrace. Where the Nineties was a smorgasbord of futurism, vanguard electronic exploration and hedonic madness, the excellently titled debut album Rave Immortal reimagines it through the prism of catchy TikTok snippets and rampant rock punch. The result is not, perhaps, the intended, explosive Prodigy-play-Download riot, but buzzy ebullient pop.Nottingham sisters Nyrobi and Chaya Beckett-Messam, who are both teenage or nigh-on Read more ...
joe.muggs
Of the big UK indie bands of the 00s wave, Bloc Party were always the most austerely art-rockish. Where Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Franz Ferdinand all to some degree or other had a dose of the vaudevillian and a bit of party “woohoo!”, BP adhered way more to the seriousness, alienation and introspection of their post-punk inspirations.This certainly didn’t do them any harm in the first instance – they were, frankly, huge – but maybe stopped them having quite so much crossover appeal, and you’re less likely to hear them now on Noughties nostalgia shows on mainstream radio and suchlike.It did, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Phoebe Lunny and Lilly Macieira are furious. Livid with the rapist cops, sleazy men, gentrifying landlords, nepo babies and, to be fair, a significant chunk of mainstream society.The Lambrini Girls’ eminently quotable debut album, Who Let the Dogs Out, has all of these people, and a good deal more in its crosshairs and doesn’t hold back with putting the boot in. Their fiery and indignant howls of righteous anger, such as “Officer, what seems to be the problem? Or can we only know post-mortem?” on “Bad Apple” and “Michael, I don’t want to suck you off in my lunchbreak” on “Company Culture” Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Props designed like flowers were scattered across the QMU stage for English Teacher's performance. A fitting choice given the Leeds group are evidently in full bloom these days, with an upgraded venue in Glasgow due to demand and, of course, a Mercury Music Prize collected along the way for debut album “This Could Be Texas”. Stepping up in size has not fazed them, though. The props were a nice backdrop but more eyecatching was singer Lily Fontaine, who fizzed with excitement all night and carried herself like she was born to be on a big stage. That isn't the most obvious setting for the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Let's walk down memory lane the Magazine way. Let's regurgitate fifth-rate Low [the David Bowie album] period pieces. Let's plonk plonk plonk with ponderous sub-Pink Floydery. Let's do the wallpaper waltz. This is not pushing back the barriers. It's frighteningly bland conservatism.”So said Garry Bushell in his March 1979 Sounds review of Magazine’s second album Secondhand Daylight. He went on. “'Silly Thing' [the single by the rump Sex Pistols] is one hundred times more exciting. 'Unconventional People' [the then-recent Royal Rasses single] is one hundred times more relaxing. [Sham 69’s] ' Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Amy Taylor and the rest of the Sniffers ambled onto the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Academy to a huge roar of approval from a packed and diverse audience on Sunday evening. With her Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, toothy smile, sparkly bikini, knee length boots and shorts she didn’t look the firebrand that her image suggests – but looks are frequently deceptive, as Birmingham was to find out.In fact, Taylor laid down the simple but iron rules of the night before Declan Mehrtens had even strapped on his guitar: “If anyone falls down, pick ‘em up. Don’t touch anyone that doesn’t want to be touched.” Read more ...
Guy Oddy
More than once during their barnstorming performance this weekend, Bobby Vylan, vocalist with Bob Vylan proclaimed from the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Institute that “We are the cutest band in punk rock. The friendliest band in rock’n’roll. The most important band in Great Britain”. He might just have been right.Bobby and his drumming buddy, Bobbie Vylan (in a world of celebrity-botherers Bobby and Bobbie like to keep things anonymous) certainly have the songs; they’ve definitely built up a rapport with their fans and stay long after the house lights come up to chat, sign merchandise and have Read more ...
Jim Bob
For a few months a couple of years ago, when you googled the name Jim Bob, although you’d get a lot of information about me, Jim Bob, the lead singer from 1990s UK indie punk heroes Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, the main image would be a picture of Donald Trump. I never fully understood why. I think it had something to do with the name "Jim Bob" being a thesaurus entry for "redneck".Anyway, here’s a chapter from my new book Where Songs Come From – The Lyrics and Origin Stories of 150 Solo and Carter USM Songs. It’s my first ever book of lyrics. I like to think of it as a memoir or Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Amy Taylor’s lyrics on Amyl and the Sniffers’ previous discs could hardly be described as demure – especially with song titles like “Don’t Need a Cunt (Like You to Love Me)”. So, it’s encouraging to hear that the band hasn’t decided to censor themselves in any way as they hurtle towards what promises to be their big breakout with Cartoon Darkness.In fact, the lairy “You’re a dumb cunt / You’re an arsehole”, which are the opening lines of the sharp and punky first track, “Jerkin”, couldn’t be more of a statement of intent from the Melbourne four-piece. That’s not to say that Amyl and the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Londoner Ayman Rostom has been around the block and then some. For some 25 years he’s been a hip hop producer as Dr Zygote, for the past decade he’s made wiry and weird house music as The Maghreban – both of these aliases are still, it seems, fully functioning. Before that still he made jungle and drum’n’bass in the initial 90s boom. And now he’s got a new alias to write, as you may guess by the album title, some very sad songs.There has always been a deep strand of outsiderdom, of being the odd one out, of not doing things in the typically correct order, to his music. So it’s no wonder that Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Somewhat amusingly, the sign outside Birmingham’s O2 Academy on Saturday stated that the evening’s entertainment was to be provided by “Frank Carter and Members of the Sex Pistols”. In a way, it was a bit misleading, suggesting that the original and greatest British punk band was going to be backing a relative newcomer rather than that they were touring with a new front man and, no doubt was more driven by John Lydon’s lawyer than what was going to happen on stage.So, with the former Johnny Rotten having taken a hissy fit and leaving the fold, the Sex Pistols rocked up in the Brum to play the Read more ...