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 [...]

[Read more →]

Breezy brilliance from casual genius 8/10 FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT Arthur Russell’s ‘Love Is Overtaking Me‘ compiles previously unreleased material from the critically regarded but somehow commercially overlooked artist’s archive. Ranging from Dylanesque folk, country and angular art pop from the 1970s through his final home recordings before death in 1991, [...]

[Read more →]

Ghost Of You Lingers 7/10 Although ‘Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’ finds Spoon moving further away from their punk beginnings and broadening their sonic pallet, it is arguably their most accessible record yet. While ‘The Ghost of You Lingers’ registers one of their most experimental album tracks so far, a masterpiece of lo-fi minimalism (further [...]

Spoon - Finer Feelings [ 4:55 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Read more →]

‘Just Like Heaven’ 9/10 While some of The Cure faithful may feel aggrieved by the absence – ‘A Forest’ notwithstanding – of tracks from their gloomiest period (Faith, Seventeen Seconds, Pornography), the more casual listener will find much to enjoy here. Having had a big Cure phase in my teens, I might quibble that the [...]

[Read more →]

Brit Daniel’s Mathematical Mind 8/10 Spoon are a singular American band at once willfully experimental and tightly committed to pop and rock traditions. Their sound is bluesy and angular, but has little in common with the current renaissance of post-punk and new wave. It could be more closely identified with The Beatles, of which there [...]

Spoon - I summon you [ 3:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Read more →]

“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 [...]

Arcade Fire - Wellandthelighthouse [ 3:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Read more →]

Radio transmission 7/10 TV on the Radio aren’t as an immediate band to get into as some reviews might have you believe. I loved their first EP Young Liars but found their debut LP ‘Desperate Youth Blood Thirsty Babes‘ wearyingly oppressive and turgid and two-starred it in an unpopular Amazon review. I have given Return [...]

tvontheradio - wolflikeme [ 4:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Read more →]

Modest achievement 7/10 Modest Mouse don’t seem to attract the same admiration on this side of the Atlantic as they do in the indie press in the States, where they are mentioned in the same breath as the Flaming Lips and Arcade Fire. It seems they enjoy something of a cult status and a reputation [...]

Modest Mouse - The View [ 4:13 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Read more →]