Music, Pop and Miles Fielder

Lambchop - Mr M

Reassembled band present lovely low-key set recalling Sinatra, Bacharach and crooners

23 Jan 2012

(City Slang) Having taken a break from the long-lasting alt.country outfit (to collaborate with singer Cortney Tidwell on 2010’s KORT project), Lambchop founder and frontman Kurt Wagner has reassembled the Nashville-based band to make its 11th…

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester

Dreamily insubstantial album that's very, very Lynch

5 Jan 2012

(Double Six) Rightly or wrongly, a lot of bands find themselves being likened to the soundtrack of a David Lynch film. In the case of Trailer Trash Tracys’ debut the comparison is, in fact, justified. Mixing dark and disturbing soundscapes…

Wilko Johnson - The Caves, Edinburgh, Thu 15 Sep 2011

A winner set from the ex Blockheads guitarist turned bluesman

22 Sep 2011

Canvey Island rocking bluesman Wilko Johnson kicked off his nationwide tour from the other end of the UK with a stonking set that compared favourably to the Essex man’s glory days as lead guitarist for Dr Feelgood in the 1970s and Ian Dury and the…

White Denim - D

Further wildly adventurous tracks held together by old school psychedelic country vibe

20 May 2011

(Downtown) The Austin, Texas outfit’s previous album, the fittingly titled Fits, was a brilliantly balmy rock-out that proved to be even more dazzlingly unpredictable than their debut. And when they played material from it on tour in Scotland, they…

Josh T Pearson - Last of the Country Gentlemen

Lift to Experience frontman's sparse, pared-down solo effort

1 Mar 2011

(Mute) Aside from a handful of low-key, off-the-map gigs, this Texas troubadour hasn’t been heard since releasing his one and only album as frontman to Lift to Experience ten years ago. The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads has since been elevated to cult…

Comanechi and Divorce

Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Thu 23 Sep 2010

6 Oct 2010

Glasgow all-girl (bar one bloke) punk outfit Divorce and London boy-girl garage duo Comanechi (pictured) are calling their musical ménage-a-deux a ‘marriage of filth’. That’s not a bad tag line for these increasingly inseparable bands that boast…

Kort - Invariable Heartache

6 Oct 2010

(City Slang) Lambchop frontman Kurt Wagner has made a career out of perfecting an alternative to his hometown Nashville’s commercial mainstream country sound. With this album of duets with Cortney Tidwell (the daughter of a Nashville dynasty)…

Frances Ruffelle: Beneath the Dress

Cheeky, sexy and surprising cabaret-esque show

23 Aug 2010

Given Ruffelle’s showbiz background – she’s the daughter of London theatre school founder Sylvia Young and a Tony Award-winning star of West End and Broadway musicals such as Les Misérables and Chicago – it’s unsurprising that her cabaret-esque Fringe…

Maria Tecce In Viva!

Seductive Spanish songs from Italian-American chanteuse

20 Aug 2009

The surname of this sultry chanteuse might give her origins away, but otherwise until she switches from Spanish to English there’s no way you’d know this apparently southern European is actually a Boston-born Italian-American who currently makes her…