Music, Reviews, Issue 619

Songs of the Year 2008

‘Skinny Love’ Bon Iver One man’s heartbreak becomes our joy from the album of the year. ‘Like the Rest of Us’ Atmosphere The leftfield dwelling purists may sneer but this is beguiling, introspective hip hop brilliance. ‘Run Run’ Those Dancing Days…

Lorna Reid - Gypsy in My Soul

JAZZ Jazz singers are not in short supply these days, and there is plenty of competition in the kind of straight-ahead standard repertoire that Edinburgh singer Lorna Reid tackles in this self-produced debut release on her own label. I can’t say that…

Aidan O'Rourke - An Tobar

FOLK The music on this excellent disc was commissioned and first performed by An Tobar Arts Centre on Mull, and is characteristic of the fiddler’s lyrical synthesis of traditional folk roots with a much more contemporary and exploratory musical…

Gigs of the year 2008

It was packed but we loved the Electric Feel of MGMT in February (Beat Club), while in March Casiotone for the Painfully Alone ’s (Nice N Sleazy’s) geeky synthesiser ballads charmed us, The Twilight Sad (King Tut’s) moved us, and Neil Young (The…

Various - Glasgow School Of Art Goes Pop

INDIE With such recent exports as The Pigeon Detectives and Kaiser Chiefs, it’s no wonder the smart new music-lovers of Leeds are looking elsewhere for the really interesting stuff. In celebration of some of Glasgow’s finest young noiseniks, widely…

New Found Glory

ALT.ROCK It’s really not often you get a band who nail pop punk live. Really nail it. The three supports tonight all try, and fail for various reasons – primarily horrendous sound – but New Found Glory have their own equipment, own sound guy and a…

Rozi Plain - Inside Over Here and Pictish Trail - Secret Soundz Vol 1

FOLK-POP-ROCK These two wonderful offerings from the ever-expanding Fence Collective serve to highlight just how diverse and ambitious the East Neuk’s musical cottage industry has become. Rozi Plain is a young Bristol-based singer-songwriter, and…

Asobi Seksu

SHOEGAZE One thing people weren’t doing a lot of during Ladytron’s support slot, a shimmering, feedback-drenched set from New York’s Asobi Seksu, was gaze at their shoes. Frontwoman Yuki Chikudate, a stony-faced dainty doll of a girl, kept her small…

Dean Owens

ACOUSTIC ROCK Every singer-songwriter has their holy trinity; those singers who inform what they do at the very core. During this intimate evening, the one-time Felsons’ head honcho, Dean Owens gives away Elvis Costello and Johnny Cash straight off…

Alex Cornish

SINGER-SONGWRITER After the recent openings of the Picture House and Sneaky Pete’s, here’s another new Edinburgh venue that’s ripe with potential. Owned by Edinburgh University, the Bowery lies in the basement of the formerly underused Roxy Art…

Tim Blanning - The Triumph of Music

MUSIC HISTORY Make no bones about it, The Triumph of Music is a heavy read, but it’s also a hugely fascinating one. Penned by Tim Blanning – a Professor of Modern European History at Cambridge – this book has the academic turning his attention to…

Doorley/Fowlis/Martin/Nic Amhlaoibh - Dual

FOLK Julie Fowlis has been the most prominent success among the new generation of Gaelic singers, and her award-winning exploits have done much to help raise the profile of Gaelic song. On this session, though, she takes equal billing with her…

Aaron Parks - Invisible Cinema

JAZZ The Seattle-born, New York-based pianist’s debut for Blue Note is an impressive one. Jazz piano is a currently crowded field, but Parks makes his mark in convincing fashion. All but three of the tracks also feature the guitar work of Mike…

Belle and Sebastian - The BBC Sessions

INDIE From Tigermilk to their most recent set, The Life Pursuit (2006), Belle and Sebastian have spent a decade establishing themselves as the purveyors of sublime post-Nick Drake indie tweeness. These delightful, if not overwhelming BBC sessions…

Angil and Hiddntracks - Ouliposaliva

AVANT-GARDE POP Introduced to Chemikal Underground by shared acquaintance Jim Putnam of Radar Bros, Angil and Hiddntracks are a quality addition to the roster, a bizarre but still indefinably soulful combination of chamber pop and jazz. While Mickaël…

Jon Savage - Dreams Come True: Classic First Wave Electro 82-87

ELECTRO After disco went saccharine and mainstream, producers returned to the stark optimistic futurism of the blueprint to make a new music, the spirit of which would later reach the mainstream via Madonna and the Pet Shop Boys. Jon Savage is a…

Le Le - Flage

EUROPOP What do you get if you put together a cult graphic designer from Amsterdam’s red light district, an ex-writer from uber-arch Vice magazine and a Dutch electro-funk producer? A euro-trash, piss-take, party-mix of half-hilarious, half-horrific…

The Amorphous Androgynous - A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding in Your Mind Vol 1

PSYCHEDELIA The electronic two-team of Gaz Cobain and Brian Dougans, aka Future Sounds of London, share their love of what they call ‘cosmic space music’ on this compilation – a trippy swirl through the 60s up to the present day, taking in Devendra…

Squarepusher - Just a Souvenir

ELECTRONIC FUNK Times change, beats get faster, slower, heavier, funkier, but Tom Jenkinson will forever be the geeky spiritual little cousin of Aphex Twin who synergised breaks and virtuoso bass playing into one monolithic Level 42-crushing funk…

Trost - Trust Me

ELECTRO POP The sound of Berliner angst then, is a woman saying over and over and over again how things are wrong. Her shoes are wrong. Her apartment is wrong. Her cheap lipstick is wrong. That particular track, then, is entitled ‘I Was Wrong’.

Findlay Napier and The Bar Room Mountaineers - Out All Night

SCOTTISH AMERICANA This debut from the Back of the Moon, Croft No. Five and Celtic Connections stalwarts is a peculiarly natural Scottish Americana that weaves traditional Scots instrumentation with an altogether wider influence, exemplified by the…

Y'all is Fantasy Island - No Ceremony

ALTERNATIVE POST-ROCK From the deepest darkest depths of Falkirk (and Glasgow), singer-songwriter Adam Stafford and his fine band of musicians unleash their third excellent, self-financed album. Marking a significant change of direction (actually…

James Orr Complex - Com Favo

BRAZILIAN MATH-FOLK BLUES Having relocated to São Paulo, Christopher Mack’s follow up to Chori’s Bundle doesn’t immediately suggest any discernable favella-sourced inspiration. Indeed, there is nothing immediate about what might be mistaken for…

Various - Soma 2008

TECHNO/HOUSE The opener (an Adam Beyer remix of Slam’s ‘Staccato Rave’) is a stormer of understated techno brilliance and while at over 12 tracks this compilation loses momentum at times, the old school acid squelch of Funk d’Void & Sian, the…

Sans Trauma - Rushing Your Dragon

Electronica/Acoustic Rushing Your Dragon comes across a bit like the Delia Smith of the music world: largely inoffensive and pretty mundane. There's no harm in listening to the six track EP (Sans Trauma's debut effort) but there's also little gain.