Music, Reviews

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, Wed 26 Nov

27 Nov 2008

Now this is how to work a crowd. ‘You’ve got the wrong band, mate’, says Nick Cave, as someone up the front makes a call for something not actually performed by he and his Bad Seeds (it must have been a Grinderman or Birthday Party track, we’re…

Art Brut

27 Nov 2008

INDIE POP Jack Daniel’s keep rolling on the JD Set tour with Hugh Cornwell (The Stranglers punk turned rock elder statesman) presiding over tonight’s picks. Anachronistic styles seem to be the theme of the evening, with supporters Rosie and the…

Brian Kellock - The Nine Mile Burn Sessions

27 Nov 2008

JAZZ It has been too a long a wait for a follow up to pianist Brian Kellock’s award-winning Live At Henry’s set. This album is an excellent launch for a potentially significant new recording project from Cathie Rae’s Thick Skinned Productions, and…

Britney Spears - Circus

27 Nov 2008

POP Tabloid hysteria aside, Britney Spears is shaping up to be one of pop’s most interesting stars, and if we’re lucky, she’ll endure more iconic chameleon-esque reinventions, Madge-style, for many years to come. Some will fail spectacularly and…

Clinic

27 Nov 2008

INDIE Always different, always the same. The Peel maxim used to describe The Fall is equally applicable to Clinic, the quiet men of the Domino Records roster, who have deviated little from the driving, atmospheric and echo drenched blueprint as…

Glasvegas - The Christmas Album

27 Nov 2008

SEASONAL ROCK Available via download or as part of repackaged re-release of their debut long player this isn’t quite the full on Christmas ‘album’ Glasvegas promised, but they have delivered six outstanding songs for the holiday season. And it…

Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy

27 Nov 2008

ROCK There were a few moments in the last 17 years that it felt like this album was likely to arrive after the dawning of actual Chinese democracy, there in rendering Axl Rose’s political musings, at best prophetic, and at worst ill-timed, such was…

Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak

27 Nov 2008

POP Of the great break up albums in music lore – Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear, Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks or even Beck’s Sea Change – few have coincided with a musical watershed such as the Matt Damon of hip hop’s fourth album. More than just a…

King Creosote & HMS Ginafore - Love + Hate = Hate

27 Nov 2008

FOLK Providing the finest cross-gender pop union since Bonnie Tyler inveigled Todd Rundgren, this bilateral treat from the Fence Collective king and queen might invoke the mathematical tongue, but this is an album of human equations: limbs are…

Razorlight

27 Nov 2008

STADIUM INDIE For a man so widely reported as having lost his rock’n’roll mojo, Jonny Borrell has either fired into the Prozac or rediscovered ‘the light’. A packed and extremely enthusiastic Corn Exchange didn’t take long to put their hosts’ minds…

Rosie and the Goldbug

27 Nov 2008

INDIE POP Jack Daniel’s keep rolling on the JD Set tour with Hugh Cornwell (The Stranglers punk turned rock elder statesman) presiding over tonight’s picks. Anachronistic styles seem to be the theme of the evening, with supporters Rosie and the…

Singles & Downloads

27 Nov 2008

What’s that Lassie? Name+Relucto are trapped down the well? ‘Spawnofspoon EP’ (Hum+Haw) ••• is a plinky-plonky kind of techno that is thankfully less like being punched hard in the face over and over, and more like the voices in your head have taken to…

The Killers - Day & Age

27 Nov 2008

POP IN INDIE CLOTHING As much as they try to conceal it with dodgy facial fuzz and crunchy guitar riffs, The Killers are just a big brash pop band at heart. The clues are in Brandon Flowers’ penchant for outlandish outfits and, of course, his way…

Tropics

27 Nov 2008

INDIE ROCK In a tiny venue on a cold Tuesday night, sometime after midnight, with a young band who are somewhat unheralded nationally - the odds were stacked against this show from the start. Yet Sneaky’s is cosy rather than characterless, the crowd…

Guillemots: Picture House, Edinburgh, 13 November

19 Nov 2008

You’d probably have a better chance of looking cool wearing a pair of bowling shoes in a supermarket than dancing at a Guillemots gig. Tight, skilled musicians they may be, party starters they are not. Their following evidently accept this, why then…

Dialogues 2008

18 Nov 2008

University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum, Sat 15-Sun 16 November. The interior of Edinburgh University’s just-built Informatics Forum on the site of the old Bristo Square car park is a retro-futurist delight resembling the set of some minimally…

Also Released - Records

13 Nov 2008

Little Joy Little Joy (Rough Trade) Strokes’ drummer Fabrizio Moretti joins Los Hermanos’ singer Rodrigo Amarante for this slice of slowed-down 60s pop, with Moretti’s girlfriend Binki dropping in for some adorably dreamy singalongs. Fabric 43 Metro…

Corrina Hewat - Harp I Do

13 Nov 2008

Corrina Hewat forsakes the chumminess of the various groups in which she is involved – including co-directing the might Unusual Suspects – for the more isolated terrain of solo harp. As the title says, harp she does, and very well too. She approaches…

Cycles - Mr McFall's Chamber with Thomas Strønen

13 Nov 2008

Out Of The Blue Drill Hall, Wed 12 November. Midway through the second set of this collaboration between Scotland’s equivalent of The Penguin Café Orchestra and Norwegian percussionist Thomas Strønen, an ebullient bike instructor comes up onstage to…

Drums of Death

13 Nov 2008

Playdate at Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sat 25 Oct If this is the future of music, then it’s loud and frightening, switching between grime, booty bass and a kind of sophisticated approximation of hardcore techno with a ferocious BPM which doesn’t…

Dumb Instrument - No-One Knows What It’s Like to Be Me

13 Nov 2008

Described in their local Ayrshire Post as like ‘Ivor Cutler on Irn Bru’, the youthful trio of singer-songwriter Tom Murray, pianist Mikey Grant and bassist Kieron Campbell, deliver their societally Scottish debut album. Augmented by fiddler Matt Harvey…

Esther O'Connor

13 Nov 2008

Brel, Glasgow, Wed 29 Oct An ethereal vision in a white lace corset, voluminous cotton skirt and flowing red hair, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that Esther O’Connor had stepped either out of a painting or off the set of a period drama on…

Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna

13 Nov 2008

Gang Gang Dance hold a very special place in my heart. They reside – still – as the single most terrible live act I have ever seen. The most pretentious, ill-conceived, tragically hip display of musical arsery I have ever had the misfortune to witness.

Gdansk

13 Nov 2008

The Mill Live @ Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 5 Nov. Glasgow quartet Gdansk claim to do ‘melodic post-punk explorations of literary pop’ and that’s about as apt a description as you could ask for. Song one, line one yields the words ‘taciturn’ and…

Geraint Watkins- In a Bad Mood

13 Nov 2008

From the depths of South Wales via London, 50-something delivers his fourth set, nearly 30 years after his Vertigo Records debut with The Dominators. Having intermittently worked as session keyboard player with Dave Edmunds, Van Morrison and Nick Lowe…

Lights Out Asia - Eyes Like Brontide

13 Nov 2008

Last year’s Tanks and Recognizers album set the tone for this spaced-out, neo-shoegazing trio from Milwaukee, Wisconsin (comprising ex-Aurore Rien duo Chris Schafer and Mike Ystad, plus guitarist Mike Rush). Haunting, eerie and cinematic (think Sigur…

Max Tundra

13 Nov 2008

Carling Academy, Glasgow, Sun 2 Nov The Max Tundra live experience is a million miles away from the home listening headphones one, as I discovered. Max was made to perform live, and perform he does, throughout a one-man, all-singing-all-dancing-show.

Remember Remember - Remember Remember

13 Nov 2008

In an age when laptops ship with gigabytes of studio quality loops for users to shuffle round on a grid to make their own creations with, it’s never been easier to make loop-based music – and quickly end up with some sterile wallpaper music – just spend…

Ross Clark & The Scarfs Go Missing

13 Nov 2008

The Mill Live @ Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 5 Nov. Glaswegian Ross Clark has been around as an alt.country/pop/folk soloist for q while now, crying out for an ‘and The Somethings’ to back him. The Scarfs Go Missing are it – an electric band augmented by…

Singles & Downloads

13 Nov 2008

It would seem that the season-savvy have been busy fashioning tracks to stay indoors to. Sofas, fine lounging and low key indie sounds are the order of the day for this fortnight’s top runners. Producer Kwes’ salutation to the slipper-set, debut solo…

Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns

13 Nov 2008

Zzzzzzzzzz … Oops sorry – you want to read a review right? OK. Here goes. Nothing very new to report from Glasgow/Belfast’s premier guitar balladeers; just more of the same insipid arena rock we’ve been battered round the ears with for the past few…

The Bad Plus - For All I Care

13 Nov 2008

The Bad Plus continue to push at the boundaries of what might constitute a jazz repertoire – and a jazz style of playing it – in the 21st century. This time round the tunes include Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’, an electrifying version of Pink Floyd’s…

The Cure - 4.13 Dream

13 Nov 2008

As Robert Smith shuffles – his unlaced hi-tops squeaking across the floor – into pop musical maturity, his willingness to indulge his dark side wavers. The band’s last album, a self-titled behemoth from 2004, was The Cure gone metal. For the greater…

Those Dancing Days - In Our Space Hero Suits

13 Nov 2008

Appearances can be deceptive. And in our image-obsessed age it’s great to hear someone like Linnea Johnson, who looks a cherubic Swedish folk-singer, but has a voice like heavily polished mahogany. Coming off somewhere between Liz Frazer and Alison…

Various - Sleepwalk: A Selection By Optimo (Espacio)

13 Nov 2008

Any album which takes a full ten minutes to actually develop any BPM at all – over Chris Watson’s found wavesound and the calming tone of Nurse With Wound’s ‘Funeral Music For Perez Prado’ isn’t your typical dance mix. But then, as should be obvious by…

Jack Daniel's JD Set, Lynchburg, Tennessee

11 Nov 2008

The most surprising thing about Jack Daniel's isn't that it is distilled in the town of Lynchburg, Tennessee, in a dry state where the law decrees that alcohol can neither be bought nor sold. It isn't that it's the world's biggest selling single brand…

Slayer - Carling Academy, Glasgow, Mon 3 Nov

7 Nov 2008

Relentless. That’s what Slayer are. Relentless in that they have been battering us with a music that they pretty much help invent in the early 80s -- they were original thrash metal pioneers alongside Anthrax, Megadeth and Metallica -- and still revisit…

Oasis, SECC, Glasgow Tue 4 Nov

5 Nov 2008

Is Liam Gallagher informing us of his travel plans, or did he actually give the game away there? ‘We’re gonna be in Glasgow for New Year,’ he seems to say from the stage at one point, only slightly battling against the hubbub from well over ten thousand…

Snow Patrol - Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, Mon 27 Oct

4 Nov 2008

Surely one of the most vanilla musical experiences to currently stalk the face of histrionic British guitar music, Snow Patrol trade on the back of a simple metaphorical truth; vanilla actually tastes pretty good, as long as you aren’t going to stuff…

Alan Tyler & the Lost Sons of Littlefield - Lonesome Cowboys

30 Oct 2008

Sometimes all it takes is a good tune and a kick-ass attitude. Alan Tyler and his Lost Sons of Littlefield have both to spare and while there is little here that will shake up the country rock canon, Lonesome Cowboys is a tremendously likeable record.

Armand Van Helden – New York: A Mix Odyssey Two

30 Oct 2008

Vanity project or something of merit from a DJ who, having found chart success, is taking a considered look at his inspirational roots? The packaging captures the African-influenced look of the late 80s we’re revisiting here while the mix itself serves…

Attic Lights - Friday Night Lights

30 Oct 2008

With soaring harmonies and sweetly twee lyrics, these Glasgow kids seem to be following the right recipe for indie glee. Sadly, their debut results sound like they have come ten years too late, as they mimic the nineties pop feel of Ash, with a…

Attica rage - Ruin Nation

30 Oct 2008

Glasgow’s Attica Rage might have the directions for the road to hard rock valhalla but the second-NWOBHM-coming they are not. Their debut Ruin Nation, although mastered in London by Skunk Anansie’s Ace, is perceptibly DIY and the foursome, who have…

Black Carrot - Drink the Black Forest

30 Oct 2008

Eight years and only one album release since their formation (2003’s Cluk), Midlands-based Black Carrot come up trumps by tying up the avant-punk power of Pere Ubu, Captain Beefheart and James Chance into one restless bundle. The quartet play brave…

Bloc Party

Barfly, Glasgow, Sun 19 Oct

30 Oct 2008

It’s no way to endear yourself to a crowd when one song in you announce ‘I know it’s a Sunday night and all Glasgow, but this is a Bloc Party show!’ A declaration from Kele Okereke that could easily be taken as a preening popstar sniping because he…

Bobo Stenson Trio - Cantando

30 Oct 2008

Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson leads this superb trio with bassist Anders Jormin and drummer Jon Fält in a concert in Edinburgh this month, and their new disc suggests that it will be a must-see occasion. This is the first time that the pianist has…

Doghouse Roses - How’ve You Been (All This Time)?

30 Oct 2008

Glasgow duo Doghouse Roses have been kicking around Glasgow for the best part of three years and this, their full-length debut, makes good on the promise hinted at on two EPs and a single (‘Greener is the Grass’) that they are something a little bit…

Giant Sand - ProVISIONS

30 Oct 2008

Arizona-bred Howe Gelb has been reconstructing North American country music under various guises and with numerous collaborators for the past 20 years. Almost twice as many records later it’s hard to tell the difference between his solo projects, his…

Holy Ghost Revival

30 Oct 2008

Not only does the Devil have the best tunes, but he lurks in the detail, and so it proved for this five-piece, religiously obeying all the rock’n’roll clichés. Trashing equipment, leaping out into the audience and sprawling himself across the floor…

John Goldie - Open 4 Closure

30 Oct 2008

Guitarist John Goldie’s latest offering eludes easy genre classification. He is probably best know for his jazz work, but is equally comfortable in a range of styles, and this disc is touched by various shades of jazz, folk, rock and funk without…