Music, Rock, Miles Fielder

Lambchop - Mr M

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

(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…

Rodrigo y Gabriela - Area 52

Orchestral backing and lots of special guests leads to a fun if over-wrought latin-funk-rock record

(Rubyworks) For their fifth studio album the Mexican acoustic rock duo have teamed up with 13-piece orchestra C.U.B.A. to rework nine previous compositions. The radically increased personnel (which is also augmented by several guests including Cuban…

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

A winner set from the ex Blockheads guitarist turned bluesman

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…

Kort - Invariable Heartache

(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)…

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Meat and Bone

First album in eight years is more of the same down-and-dirty punk-blues

It’s been eight years since the Blues Explosion’s last studio album. In that time the band members have pursued solo projects, with frontman Jon Spencer focusing on his boppin’ rockabilly venture Heavy Trash. Now they’re back 21 years after they first…

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester

Dreamily insubstantial album that's very, very Lynch

(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…

Dan Sartain – Too Tough To Live

Old School punk album from the raw rock'n'roller

(One Little Indian) The handsome Alabama rocker’s throwback blues and rockabilly sound has always been fuelled by a raw power reminiscent of punk. For his sixth album, the greasy-quiffed one has embraced the punk rock style as well as its spirit with…

White Denim - D

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

(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…

EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints

Slow-burning alt.rock from the former Gowns and Amps for Christ noise-folker

(Souterrain Transmissions) Erika M Anderson (EMA), formerly of the folk-noise outfits Amps for Christ and Gowns, makes her solo debut with this ethereal collection of lo-fi grunge ballads. Hushed vocals set to low-key guitar strumming that builds to…

Josh T Pearson - Last of the Country Gentlemen

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

(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

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…

Dan Sartain - Dan Sartain Lives!

(One Little Indian) Following in the footsteps of fellow American retro-rockers Jack White and Jon Spencer, Birmingham, Alabama’s Dan Sartain decamps to London to record his latest long-player at Toerag Studios under the guidance of producer Liam…

New York Dolls

Having burned brightly for just a few short years in the early 1970s, seminal glam-punk band the New York Dolls reformed 27 years later for what was supposedly a one-off gig at the Morrissey-curated 2004 Meltdown festival. A rapturous reception from the…

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…