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2 Oct 2008
JAZZ Another foray into the fusion of Coltrane-influenced jazz with a vibrant African vibe that saxophonist Alan Skidmore has previously explored with Ubizo, but with a stronger slant toward the world music pole than on their two earlier discs. The…
The Clash - Live Revolution Rock (SongBMG) Apparently Joe Strummer found the long-lost tapes of this 1982 concert while moving house. The punk rockers shake up New York’s Shea Stadium with hits including ‘London Calling’ and ‘Rock the Casbah’. Kris…
INDIE Divorce is a bitch. But instead of languishing in his underpants, all beardy and beer-soaked following a much publicised split from his wife, Ben Folds jumped straight back into the studio and has come up with these 12 energy-packed tracks for…
JAZZ Saxophonist David Sanborn takes on the staple blues and R&B repertoire in a disc that many will doubtless see as just another commercial gambit from a very successful musician. The stacking up of guest artists – Derek Trucks on ‘Brother Ray’…
ROCK The fringes of rock music are littered with bad intentions. Bands of grunts that wish to thrill us, disorient us, frighten us and make us feel mildly queasy. Glasgow’s own Desalvo achieve all of this in one long-coming, fast burning debut album…
ALT-FOLK COUNTRY Now several solo albums and 14 years into his career (not counting his pre-solo time with Chicago outfit Bucket No.6), Nashville-based Hoekstra returns with another set of whispering, easy-on-the-ear songs. While Dylan, Cohen and…
ROCK Darwin’s theory of convergent evolution states that disparate, unrelated organisms evolve similar traits when adapting to similar environments, and it’s clearly in evidence amongst stadium rock bands. Using the blustery, overblown U2 blueprint…
REGGAE ETC Sound system culture is surprisingly at home in a dreich Scotland and one has come of age here throughout the course of the last decade. Here Mungo’s self-congratulatory debut long-player champions the collective as no less proactive in…
ROCK Liking a new Oasis album nowadays has less to do with the actual songs and more to do with how you feel about them. They, like their fellow indie spods turned megastars Coldplay and Razorlight, provoke wrath and rapture in equal measure in our…
INDIE If it has felt like a long time coming for Popup’s debut long player to land in our arms then maybe it’s because we’ve been aware of them being damn good from very early on. Furious early demos, bursting with barely contained energy, recorded…
Nothing draws a groan of predictably quite like finding a new Oasis shortplayer on top of the singles pile, so we’ll keep this brief. ‘Shock of the Lightning’ (Big Brother) •• is another bit of drony fluff Noel Gallagher probably found down the back of…
WORLD LOUNGE Leaders of the horizontal protest Thievery Corporation remain resolutely political in their approach and there is really no mistaking who programmed this set of sophisticate dub lounge. The breadth of styles treated to their signature…
INDIE This, Travis’ fifth studio album, is both their finest since 1999’s The Man Who and just, y’know, alright. The fact is, after making a glistening splash with Good Feeling and then predictably repeating the winning formula hit on with The Man…
POP Since they first sneaked into view five years ago, throwing down doo-wop takes on Pixies tunes and post-MBV space funk, TV on the Radio have been, to say the least, awkward customers, their sonic tricksiness often being a barrier to the enjoyment…
18 Sep 2008
Limbering up well in advance for the run-up to Christmas (yes, it’s only September and we’ve already dropped the C-word), all manner of superstar acts are crawling out the woodwork to release long awaited albums. Oasis pave the way with their seventh…
ROCK The line between familiarity and contempt is drawn thinner than ever currently, but Mogwai, six albums and 12 years in, seem in no danger of wearing out their welcome. Given how limiting the initial wordless loud-quiet-loud grind on which…
Rags & Feathers - The Other Side of Morning ( Lucky Number Nine ) Tom Davis used to make rowdy garage blues with Dead Fly Buchowski, but this debut from his new Glasgow-based band, Rags & Feathers is an altogether gentler affair, full of lush, folky…
POP There’s no disputing Brian Wilson’s genius – Beach Boy’s classic Pet Sounds is proof alone – and it’s wonderful to have him back from his self-imposed exile; performing live (particularly his joyous set at T in the Park in 2007) and releasing…
JAZZ Saxophonist Charles Lloyd is now a respected elder statesman in jazz circles, but in the late 60s his group with pianist Keith Jarrett and drummer Jack DeJohnette was making inroads into the rock audience with appearances at venues like the…
ITALO DISCO Heartbreak, where have you been all my life? It seems only fair to point out – before excessive scenester fawning turns the increasingly resurgent Italo disco sound into a mutated make-believe genre of new rave proportions – that this…
JAZZ The name most likely to catch the eye on this release is probably drummer Seb Rochford, although the disc was actually recorded back in 2004, and Tim Giles seems to have taken his place in the band’s more recent live dates. Nonetheless, he makes…
POP Lewis is a sultry indie poster girl with Rilo Kiley and delivered a beautifully moving country record, backed by The Watson Twins, two years ago. This second solo album lacks the focus of those projects, but it’s still a cut above the average…
ROCK Some people just know how to say the right things and this trio of Edinburgh bams got two stars for the top name and the sticker on the CD case alone declaring ‘ … if you like albums, then this might be for you …’ Maybe ‘if you like The Melvins…
ELECTRO POP After 14 years in bands like Data Panik, The Kitchen and most famously Bis, this is the first time Amanda McKinnon has stepped away from the collaborations and released under her own (stage) name – although listening to the album, it…
ROCK The Rev are like an indie version of Madonna, constantly reinventing themselves and their sound with each album, and this seventh studio outing is another successful reincarnation for these dreamy loons. Their early drone-rock weirdness and even…
METAL That Metallica have become metal’s answer to the Rolling Stones – an endlessly touring megalith who’s albums have be come increasingly irrelevant as their live shows have become greater spectacles – should not negate getting the most out of…
Locally-sourced produce is all the rage these days, so let’s have a cheeky wee Scottish round-up this issue, eh? Quality meat to kick off in the form of Frightened Rabbit , whose ‘I Feel Better’/’The Twist’ (Fat Cat) •••• is excellently jittery…
FOLK The harp is enjoying something of a resurgence at the moment, with new young players like Ailie Robertson, Rachel Hair and The Duplets pairing of Freya Thomsen and Gillian Fleetwood all focusing on the oldest of the Scottish folk instruments.
4 Sep 2008
Sending out mixed messages is hardly a new tactic in the already fickle world of indie rock. Kele Okoreke and his clan have been issuing out puzzling notices for some time now, topped off with the claim that their Leeds Festival show would be their last…
Look up ‘nearly men’ in the Dictionary of Obscure Indie Rock Lore and you’ll find a long, arduous, hand wringing essay about Constantines. A band who in nine years, have never quite had their moment in the sunshine but work away feverishly, secretly…
According to Holmes his fourth solo album began as a cluster of instrumental tracks which lead him into a creative cul-de-sac until seismic events in his life – becoming a dad, the death of his parents – inspired him to pen some personal lyrics and…
Dean Owens Whisky Hearts (Navigator) The craft of songwriting has become devalued in mainstream music these days, but there remain talented individuals out there waiting to be found. One such is Dean Owens, Leith-based singer songwriter with a…
DragonForce play the most extreme power metal and it’s impossible to review Ultra Beatdown without the words ‘pompous’ and ‘bombastic’. They sound like every Iron Maiden song every written, all played at once, due to the sheer speed of delivery from the…
The crossing of normally disparate musical boundaries is always to be applauded, although it’s not automatically the green light to genius that reviewers sometimes make out. This collaboration from two generations of folkies – Kris Drever and John…
The world is a hard cruel place. War, famine, death, destruction, pain, suffering, poverty and disease all blight our soon-to-be not very green planet. Why, oh why then add to the misery with something so callous, contemptible and unthinking as this…
Emiliana Torrini Me and Armini (Rough Trade) Torrini is frustrating. The Icelandic chanteuse is gifted both in terms of her gorgeous natural voice and her perceptive pop songwriting (she co-wrote ‘Slow’ for Kylie, for example). But she also likes…
Edinburgh singer Gina Rae has proved herself adept in straight jazz idioms, but this album also reflects the pop-inflected side of her work. Sandy Wright’s acoustic guitar accompaniments provide a spare, uncomplicated support for her light, supple…
‘The Best New Band in Britain’ says the NME. And for once they have thrown their fickle arrow of instant fame at a worthy target. In 2006, former footballer James Allan assembled a motley crew to give form to his ‘poems’ – disjointed conglomerations of…
The current line-up of Haftor Medbøe’s group is the strongest yet. The guitarist’s accomplished soloing is supported by powerful contributions from two of the leading horn players on the Scottish scene, saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski and trombonist…
New Jazz Orchestra - Camden ‘70 (Dusk Fire Records) Neil Ardley was well on the way to being a forgotten figure in British jazz, but reissues of some of his work in the past couple of years have gone some way to redressing the balance. It should be…
Let’s get any hating out the way first. The Pussycat Dolls claim ‘When I Grow Up’ (Interscope) * is a tongue-in-cheek look at attention-seekin', dollar-sniffin', 'boobie' flashin' wannabes, but if there's a punchline to their melody-free joke, the girls…
Slipknot - All Hope is Gone (Roadrunner) Slipknot could so easily have been a gimmick. Nine masked men in boiler suits battering out heavy metal. But from first single (‘Wait and Bleed’ back in 1999) they have constantly proved their musical…
So your big sister is Beyonce, one of the biggest pop stars in the world. What do you do? Open that bakery you’ve always fancied? Go help the poor kids in war-torn African states? No, of course not, you go into pop music. Knowles the younger has…
Mike Skinner might be one of the finest pop artists of our generation, but there’s no escaping the fact that his fourth album is a real disappointment. Certain passages of it might well grow over time, yet the suspicion is that it’s just too damn…
Based in Dunfermline, Underling pull off the hitherto impossible trick of making the Kingdom of Fife sound like a district of Brooklyn. Their music is played live, a light but spirited bed of intently grooving jazz, through which Aron Moorhouse’s raps…
21 Aug 2008
This has been a while coming. With the recent flutter of cerebral pop acts with one eye firmly on the dancefloor, it was only a matter of time before the once-ubiquitous cowbell worked its way back into the mix – DFA would approve. This record bursts at…
In this age of quick fixes and cheap thrills, there’s something deeply comforting about James Yorkston. This fourth studio album is the antithesis of the nasty fast food rush of most mainstream indie fare, more like a luxurious banquet in the company of…
Singer Siobhan Miller from Penicuik and fiddler and singer Jeana Leslie from Orkney met while students at the RSAMD, and gave notice that we should expect something special when they won the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award for 2008. They excel in the vocal…
John Baker was one of three lynchpin members of the much mythologised BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 60s and 70s whose work, until this reissue on the ever oddball and reliable Trunk Records, has been overshadowed by that of his colleague Delia…
There’s a pleasing, almost literary, conceit to this album. Bristol-based electronica artist Minotaur Shock – otherwise known as David Edwards – has given each downloadable track a pricing guideline corresponding to various criteria of his own choosing.
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