Demob Happy

Beak>- Beak>
6.5/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Subterranean bass throbs, some cod-ghostly wailing and vaguely arabesque improvisations on a rusty sounding organ … ’Backwell’ is the opener of the self-titled debut album by Beak>, a new band including Portishead’s Geoff Barrow. With its slighty nauseating retro synths fanning out mechanically over chugging motorik, ‘Blackwell’ signposts [...]

[Read more →]

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

8.5/10
Perennial critics’ favourites Yo La Tengo return with an album that reigns in some of the magpie tendencies of 2006’s sprawling ‘I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass’ with a more focused set. ‘Popular Songs’ - their twelfth [...]

[Read more →]

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
8.5/10
On their first album ‘Limbo Panto’ Wild Beasts got painted by some as peddlers of a contrived English eccentricity that was unfashionably arch, all barbershop harmonies and old world camp. While many were turned off by their falsetto front man Hayden Thorpe, whose gymnastic [...]

[Read more →]

I never thought it would happen to me but finally I’ve succumbed to external pressures and have been unable to update this blog with any regularity. Firstly, I’ve been concentrating efforts on a new English-language website for my new home town, Grenoble, in south-east France. Secondly, I’ve recently become a father for the first time. [...]

[Read more →]

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
White Denim - Fits
8/10
Such is the strength and depth (to borrow a football cliché) of music Stateside at the moment that I find myself with three acts on heavy rotation at the moment from Austin, Texas, alone. OK, so Spoon haven’t done anything lately but they’re a band [...]

[Read more →]

Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle - Bill Callahan
8.5/10

Just as I thought I was tiring of the alt-country/new folk revival, along comes an album - from one of the scene’s relative old timers - of such immersive beauty that I can’t get enough of it. While there is much about Bill Callahan’s ‘Sometimes I [...]

[Read more →]

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Album Review: Magik Markers - Balf Quarry
7/10

Magik Markers are the noise rock duo hailing from Hartford, Connecticut, comprising two core members in Elisa Ambrogio and Pete Nolan. ‘Balf Quarry’ is their first album on Drag City having previously released material on - among others - the Ecstatic Peace [...]

[Read more →]

Album Review: Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years
8.5/10

In a recent Pitchfork review Animal Collective declared that it must be “weird to be in a band with good musicians”, referring to the fact that they basically view themselves as electronic collagists than a band in the strict (i.e., formally trained) sense. It is an interesting [...]

[Read more →]

Album Review: Crystal Antlers - Tentacles
7/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Among the many acts hyped in 2008 there was a proliferation of new bands called Crystal something. Crystal Castles, Crystal Stilts and Cystal Antlers all came out of the leftfield to get blog love last year. Having been totally confused by the similarity [...]

[Read more →]

Album Review: Dark Was the Night: Red Hot Compilation - Various Artists
8/10
Most posts of Red Hot Organization’s ‘Dark Was the Night’ compilation begin with a summary dismissal of compilations in general, and particularly those in the name of charity. If such projects are as bad as people say, ‘Dark Was the Night’ - one of [...]

[Read more →]