Demob Happy

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Californian acid rockers Sleepy Sun follow up last year’s ‘Embrace’ with another serving of massive, sun-blasted riffs. On ‘Fever’, however,  they subvert the dynamics of ostentatious heaviosity by adding some infectious boy-girl folk pop ( ‘Ooh Boy’, ‘Rigamaroo’) and some compelling sonic curveballs that keep the listener guessing to the finish. [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
At some point over the last decade David Holmes’ brand of retro mishmashery seemed to fade from the zeitgeist despite the fact that the Northern Irish producer was reaching a wider audience (and no doubt keeping his bank manager happy) with soundtrack work. His turn to the movie [...]

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Homelife - Exotic Interlude
7/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
The last time Homelife surfaced on my radar was with the 2002 Ninja Tune release ‘Flying Wonders‘, a whimsical and varied hotch-potch of exotic styles that was more than much of the hipster muzak coming out of the label at the time. Whereas then the core [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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. [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Dirty Projectors -Bitte Orca
8/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Dirty Projectors are a band so singularly unconventional that I wondered how they had managed to gain so much popular attention - although their recent David Byre collaboration (the excellent ‘Knotty Pine’, from Red Hot’s much admired ‘Dark Was the Night‘ compilation) certainly must have [...]

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BRAND NEU ! - Various artists
8/10
BRAND NEU! is a tribute to the influential German band (aka Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother) that brings together a respectable selection of artists inspired by the Krautrock innovators. There are one note chugging guitars and hypnotic motorik grooves aplenty in this beguiling compilation, which doesn’t suffer too much from [...]

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