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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Second poor album in a row for once-great psych rockers 6.5/10 FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT ‘Snowflake Midnight‘ is a departure from previous Mercury Rev records in that it is almost entirely dominated by electronics and glacial synths. A digital wonderland as sonically rich as Flaming Lips’ ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots‘, [...]

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Dawn choruses 8.5/10 The first thing you notice when listening to ‘At Dawn‘ if, like me, you’ve approached their back catalogue, er, backwards, is how faithful it is to a kind of alt-country orthodoxy when compared to the more magpie-like tendencies of ‘It Still Moves‘ and ‘Z‘. Arguably it is more a consistency of mood [...]

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More Icelandic fairytale prog from the band that specialises in Icelandic fairytale prog 6/10 Sigur Ros are fast becoming a Popular Experimental Band That I Don’t Like, a moniker I have only knowingly bestowed before on Spiritualised. On paper, Sigur Ros are a band that I should love, but it just doesn’t really engage me. [...]

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Ghost in the machine 8/10 All the acrimony surrounding the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, in which Wilco left Warner/Reprise to resist attempts to make the record more commericially viable, seems bizarre now. For despite its moments of sonic chaos, YHF is a great, Beatles-esque, countryfied pop masterpiece with great hooks and immediately indentifiable melodies. [...]

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10 year milesone for classic psych rock album 9/10 Mercury Rev’s 1998 album was undoubtably a turning point, a massively influencial re-envisioning of the pop-rock form that inspired countless imitators. Marginally pre-dating The Flaming Lips’ equally stunning The Soft Bulletin by about one year, in my view Deserter’s Songs began a protracted period of American [...]

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I’m The Man Who Loves You 8/10 It took me a long time to come round to Wilco. I had always wrongly thought of them as a square man’s Flaming Lips. While there are superficial resemblances between the two bands, Wilco’s experimental brand of alt-country is focused on more classic pop concerns. The sonic adventurism [...]

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This month I’ve been beguiled by the latest side project by sometime DJ and Kings of Convenience member Erlend Oye. The Whitest Boy Alive hints at Oye’s interest in the hypnotic rhythmic concerns of house music but features the same Simon & Garfunkle-esque vocal style of KoC. Angular – but certainly not abrasive – guitars, [...]

Whitest Boy Alive - Burning [ 3:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yeasayer - Many Waves [ 4:07 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Octopus Project - Bees Bein Strugglin [ 3:48 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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