Music, Reviews, Issue 633

Singles & Downloads

Time was that the onset of summer beckoned a slew of novelty singles, courtesy of cartoon pop ingénues, often replete with carefree dance moves. You know: The Vengaboys’ ‘Going to Ibiza’; Los del Rio’s ‘Macarena’; Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’. Ah, happy…

Wilco: Wilco (The Album)

Reputation can be a curse. With 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born two years later, Wilco re-wrote the book on what rock bands could do, blending brilliant musical experimentation with note-perfect rootsy folk-rock and searingly troubled…

La Roux

Good pop music is instant, but great pop music lasts forever. Elly ‘La Roux’ Jackson, with hair like a winsome gingerbread Mr Whippy, a voice like spun sugar and on the receiving end of more hyperbole than Cristiano Ronaldo, Kanye West and Susan Boyle…

Soul Power

Just when you thought there were no more films to be made about the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman bout in Zaire in 1974 there comes a remarkable film about the 12-hour, three-night-long concert which took place around the event. In 1974 musician Hugh…

Battant

Signed to Paris’ Kill the DJ label, sometime home of Optimo’s own How to Kill the DJ (Part 2) mix, Battant are a class above most other bands of their ilk. Look to lead singer Chloe Raunet for the reason why, her jeans, plain white T-shirt and cropped…

Malcolm Middleton

Welcome back, Malcolm Middleton. Now with added Jenny Reeve on guitar, violin and gorgeous, elfin vocals, and Johnny Lynch (the Fence Collective’s Pictish Trail) in charge of yet more guitar, harmonies and – we kid you not – rapping out the entire theme…

Jocasta Sleeps

It could be said the Scottish alternative music scene is threatening to become over-saturated with Biffy Clyro clones, accent and guitar attack in tow, so where are the bands capable of transcending this rut? Well, we may well have just found one.

AC/DC

Crashing through the back of the stage on a full-size locomotive is one hell of a way to make an entrance, as the opening chords of ‘Rock’n’Roll Train’ blare out across a sweltering Hampden. The atmosphere is electric as AC/DC are greeted as all…

SNJO: Rhapsody in Blue Live

It has been a source of regret that so little of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s mighty achievements of the past decade and more have made it onto commercial CD release. This is only the second disc they have been able to issue (although Tommy…

Alyn Cosker: Lyn’s Une

The Ayrshire drum maestro’s current high-power trio with guitarist David Dunsmuir and bass guitarist Ross Hamilton provides the foundation for his debut album. The energised music foregrounds the funk and groove elements of Cosker’s playing to great…

Peatbog Faeries: Live

The Skye-based fusion outfit never let up in energy or intensity in the course of this first live recording, taken from concerts in Edinburgh and Durham last year. It will surely satisfy those who feel the band’s studio outings don’t quite reflect the…

Busdriver: Jhelli Beam

Regan ‘Busdriver’ Farquhar’s natural verbosity has won him as many badmouths as it has plaudits in the past, and for album number eight, he seems perfectly content to continue letting his mouth run off. His supreme ability to over-egg the lyrical…

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

Another new name (all four of them!) to drop into conversation at a summer shindig, the enigmatic Miles stirs the cockles on this rich and raw debut set. From Portland, Oregon, to living rough in Coney Island, New York (and back again), Miles and his…

Dream Theater: Black Clouds & Silver Linings

The phrase ‘prog-metal’ might not be the most alluring, but bands like Mastodon, Muse and The Mars Volta are helping to rehabilitate this most over-indulgent of art forms. Dream Theater have been in the game for longer than most, creating dense, complex…

White Denim: Fits

The Texan trio who hit the ground running a year ago with their impressively disparate debut Workout Holiday are back with an even wilder polyphonic follow-up. Appropriately titled Fits, this schizoid record veers from avant punk to psychedelic funk…

Various: Beatdown mixed by Scratch Perverts

Those most nimble of fingers ever to molest a turntable in the name of high hip hop art, the collective better known as the Scratch Perverts (who enjoy in their number Edinburgh’s own Plus One) spread their wings here for our musical delight. Using…

Florence and the Machine: Lungs

Worth bagging for the staggering drive-pop grandeur of ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)’ alone, this surprisingly compelling debut from skewed London chorister Florence Welch largely justifies, and even outshines, the hype. Abounding with curious musical…

VV Brown: Travelling Like the Light

Underneath VV Brown’s forward roll fringe and glossy grin beats a rockabilly heart. Hyped as a ‘girl most likely to’ in 2009, it’s kind of a balloon burster to find her pop’n’roll debut doesn’t match up to her striking, wholesome-hot good looks. (She’s…

Beerjacket: Animosity

Like an iron fist in a velvet glove, acoustic troubadour Peter Kelly has wrapped powerful lyrical sentiment inside a delicate musical framework for this stripped-back-to-basics album. And what an album it is, with whispered vocals, plaintive harmonies…

Keletigui et ses Tambourinis: The Syliphone Years

Look no further: the sultry, sensual dance sounds the summer demands can be found right here. Sterns are riding high on the back of their recent digital remastering of Mali’s Rail Band (Salif Keita, Mory Kante) and TPOK Jazz, and now give the same…

Magnolia Electric Co: Josephine

If it’s conciliatory cowboy rock you seek, then look no further than Josephine. It’s the latest plaintive exposition from alt-country connoisseur Jason Molina: a dude whose musical soubriquets include Magnolia Electric Co and Songs: Ohia. While…

Mara Aranda & Solatge: Dèria

Valencian singer Mara Aranda joins forces with Solatge in her latest post-L’Ham du Foc venture. Her voice is as spirited as ever as she sings stories of smugglers, mermaids and muleteers, re-vamping ancient Mediterranean-Spanish songs for the 21st…

Jackie-O Mother-Fucker: Ballads of the Revolution

Now 15 years formed and with a plethora of studio (and live) albums to their name, Portland’s JoMFs produce yet another mind-blowing, psychedelic trip. Sounding like a hybrid of Butthole Surfers, Spacemen 3 and Red Red Meat, lead-guru Tom Greenwood and…

Implosion Quintet: The Future Sound of Yesterday

A mashed-up melting pot of experimental world musak ‘lone’ multi-instrumentalist James R Baker delivers his long-awaited IQ debut. Cinematic, with a taste for the Eastern European, TFSOY is an eclectic and exotic hybrid of bohemian jazz and…