| Against Me! - White Crosses - Review |
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Wednesday, 09 June 2010 21:29
 A boat-rocking work with plenty of merit in places
After 2007’s New Wave did everything from upset to alienate a portion of their fanbase – depending which message boards you read and, more tellingly, which ones you believe – Against Me! have navigated those stormy, puritanical waters to bring us White Crosses. And while there’s been no attempt to steer a course back to the blistering folk punk of their earlier releases, it’s hard to argue that they’re not still rocking the boat.
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| Jimi Hendrix - Fire: The Jimi Hendrix Collection Review |
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Wednesday, 09 June 2010 10:41
 Have a(nother) Jimi Hendrix Best-Of
A 20-track set that’d be more accurately titled It’s Father’s Day: Have a(nother) Jimi Hendrix Best-Of, Fire is the kind of cash-in release that adds nothing to the legacy of the artist in question, but nevertheless comprises a succinct introduction to a singular, inimitable talent for anyone who, incredulously, owns none of this material already.
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| Last Updated on Wednesday, 09 June 2010 10:54 |
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| Nina Nastasia - Outlaster - Review |
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Tuesday, 08 June 2010 11:00
 This is a record full of space and intimacy
Since 2000, Hollywood-born, New York-based singer-songwriter Nina Nastasia has been making astonishing albums that have cut listeners to the quick, leaving their bones exposed, dragging their hearts away. She has swept up some high-profile fans in the process: six sessions were recorded for John Peel, and legendary producer Steve Albini has worked with her closely throughout the last decade, calling her first album, Dogs, “one of my favourites… of the couple of thousand records I’ve been involved with”. Still largely unknown outside alternative circles, Nastasia’s bruised, balmy songs deserve a much wider audience.
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| The Chemical Brothers - Further - Review |
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Monday, 07 June 2010 17:43
 The Chemical Brothers show no signs of fatigue
The Chemical Brothers were always a step ahead, a step Further (ho ho) if you will. While their contemporaries crashed, burned, and then possibly reformed, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have kept their material fresh for six – five of which have been chart-toppers – studio albums of high-quality shape-throwing, and there’s no reason given here why they should throw in their rave towels now.
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| Oasis - Time Flies... 1994-2009 - Review |
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Sunday, 06 June 2010 20:31
 A best-of set that highlights exactly where things went wrong
One has to feel sorry for a band that pushes itself to its artistic, physical and psychological limits and still only ends up being as good as Shed Seven or Razorlight. But at least they tried, right? On the other hand, one can and must reserve special criticism for the truly talented who choose commercial gain over artistic endeavour, when everyone from Prince to Johnny Cash and (yes, indeed) The Beatles realised that it was possible to combine both ventures.
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| Robert Wyatt - His Greatest Misses - Review |
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Sunday, 06 June 2010 15:10
 A reminder of the greatness of this Great British Eccentric
This compelling introduction to Robert Wyatt’s career was initially released in 2004 – by, in Wyatt’s words, “a thoughtful chap in Japan brought these tunes together as a sort of canter around my back-catalogue”. A canter it is, through the unique rhythms and cadences of the former Soft Machine vocalist’s musical world, one that takes in tender pop, light prog and gentle jazz, plus the mesmerising innocence, and bluntness, of his rough, Kentish accent.
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| Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today - Review |
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Saturday, 05 June 2010 16:27
 Every track on this superb album is a winner
Surely even normal kids growing up in Hollywood must, at times, feel like they're missing out on something – transplant the most mundane memories from your youth to a town 20 car minutes south of those famous cinema hills, with all their fun and iconography, and imagine the envy and frustration that'd rot at your gut whenever you had to spend the night at home alone babysitting. Ariel Pink, aka Ariel Marcus Rosenberg, grew up in Pico-Robertson, a town of aforementioned ilk, and his first memories of pop music came from the radio he'd hear every day driving to Beverley Hills High School. Without wanting to play dumb Freud, it's rewarding to view Pink's arrival at this point in his recording career through the filter of his Hollywood childhood, and all the associations with Alicia Silverstone's emerald green eyes the phrase conjures up.
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| Last Updated on Saturday, 05 June 2010 16:42 |
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| Wintersleep - New Inheritors - Review |
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Saturday, 05 June 2010 16:00
 Critical love affair with a resolute classiness
When Juno Award-winning Canadian quintet Wintersleep’s third album, 2007’s Welcome to the Night Sky, collected a considerable quota of critical plaudits – “on a par with Band of Horses,” read one review – it seemed their star was set for commercial ascendance. But it hasn’t quite happened for them in the same way as fellow countrymen Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, two groups to have taken praise in the press and turned it into mainstream-appeal gold. When they last visited London, it wasn’t an Academy for this lot – instead, they played a whiskey bar (albeit a very popular one).
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| We Are Scientists Barbara Review |
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Friday, 04 June 2010 16:02
 Barbara is their best work by far
Since the release of 2008’s Brain Thrust Mastery, We Are Scientists have enlisted former Razorlight man Andy Burrows on drums and created and starred in a series of short MTV mock-docs.
Listeners to this fourth album concerned about any comedy influence can rest easy, though, as Brooklyn-based pair Keith Murray and Chris Cain have only allowed the addition of Burrows to affect their day jobs. After all, one Flight of the Conchords is enough.
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Surfer Blood will be riding a wave of popularity