Demob Happy

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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“What will it take to make you listen?”
8.5/10
Some of my favourite albums of the last couple of years have come from a strand of impressionistic folk that roughly began with the release of Grizzly Bear’s ghostly ‘Yellow House‘ in 2006 and Iron & Wine’s kaleidoscopic ‘Shepherd’s Dog‘ a year later, gathering pace in 2008 with [...]

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The Empire strikes black
8.5/10
Micah P Hinson’s fourth album - the first I’ve heard since his powerful debut ‘Micah P Hinson and the Gospel of Progress‘ - is an accomplished work and the sound of a prolific artist heading for an artistic peak. Produced by alt-rock mixing guru John Congleton, renowned for the dark gloss put [...]

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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 dominance [...]

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“There’s a great black wave in the middle of the sea”
8/10
Neon Bible may not have the conceptual unity of Arcade Fire’s debut Funeral, but if anything it is more funereal, a vast cathedral of sound threatening to overwhelm the listener like a “great black wave in the middle of the sea”. Win Butler’s urgent, unhinged [...]

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