Music, Doug Johnstone

Miaoux Miaoux - Light of the North

Gloriously melodic dance-pop in the vein of Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx and the Avalanches

This is a perfect example of how good pop music can be if it’s driven by a restless intelligence. Miaoux Miaoux, aka Julian Corrie, has been turning heads with his distinctive electro-pop sound for a while, but this first album for Chemikal Underground…

Lightships - Electric Cables

Teenage Fanclub's Gerry Love album of sun-soaked, blissed-out guitar pop

(Geographic) Gerry Love might have insisted on a band name for this new project, but the sound is all Gerry. Love’s contributions to Teenage Fanclub are invariably the understated gems, and so it is here with this sumptuous, trembling collection of…

M Ward - A Wasteland Companion

Americana full of understated charm

(Bella Union) M Ward is probably best known these days for being one half of She & Him, his collaboration with Zooey Deschanel, but long before that partnership he was dishing up dreamy slices of Americana like this. As the title hints at, this…

Bobby Conn - Macaroni

Sixth album from flamboyant glam-pop weirdo

(Fire Records) Imagine if something really emotionally scarring happened to, say, Prince, something in his formative years that sent him down an altogether darker path. Now say hello to Bobby Conn, flamboyant glam-pop weirdo from Chicago with a…

Seamus Fogarty - God Damn You Mountain

Dreamy, mesmerising folk music with Americana feel from Irish singer-songwriter

(Fence Records) We’re beginning to suspect Fence Records have some secret laboratory in Fife where they genetically splice brilliant musicians to create new wonders. In the case of Irish singer-songwriter Seamus Fogarty, that would involve DNA…

Little Doses - Rock Riot Soul

Sadly lacking in songwriting originality and inspiration

(Black Ditto Recordings) Little Doses are an Edinburgh indie outfit established by bassist Mark McClelland, most famous for departing Snow Patrol just when they made it big. The Little Doses blueprint is undeniably more varied than Snow Patrol’s…

The Ting Tings - Sounds From Nowheresville

Second album a mixed bag containing glimpses of what makes them fun

(Columbia) Pity the poor Ting Tings. After selling millions of records, the Mancunian electro-pop duo got stressed, scrapped a whole album and hid from their record label. Allegedly. You can see why the pair might worry about following We Started…

First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar

Heartfelt ode to Americana from the Swedish siblings

(Wichita) On the surface, First Aid Kit’s obsession with Americana looks a little odd, given that they’re Swedish sisters barely out of their teens. But the pair’s homage is steeped in knowledge, and this second album sounds like it could’ve been…

Explosions in the Sky set for UK tour 2012

The post-rock icons return to Glasgow to tour latest album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

There’s a long tradition of guitar bands scrabbling around trying to define the zeitgeist or whatever. Then there are the more restrained bands who quietly go about the business of being casually awesome. Explosions in the Sky fall into the latter…

Sigur Rós - Inni

Stunning live recording to accompany the Icelandic quartet's latest film release

(Krunk) Sigur Rós’s effortlessly epic post-rock feels over-exposed these days, seemingly soundtracking every nature documentary of the last decade, but stripped of that banal association it still wields enormous emotional power, as demonstrated on…

We Were Promised Jetpacks - In the Pit of the Stomach

Not groundbreaking, but an impressive second album

(Fat Cat) The main challenge for Scottish noiseniks these days is to not sound like Biffy Clyro, something We Were Promised Jetpacks achieve with aplomb on this accomplished second album. There are echoes of Interpol and even The Skids on the likes…

The Shivers - More

Sixth album of diverse styles linked by soulful sensibility from New York outfit

(Fence Records) Having tootled along in NYC for years, this is The Shivers’ sixth album but first to be released over here, and it’s a perfect introduction to their idiosyncratic and gentle form of genius. Diversity is the name of the game; anti-folk…

Explosions in the Sky: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Post-rock titans add a few subtle colours to their palette for fifth album

(Bella Union) It’s been over a decade since this Texan post-rock foursome first formed through an advert – ‘Wanted: Sad triumphant rock band’ – and this fifth album sees them sticking to that definition while subtly expanding their sound. It’s…

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine

Plaintive vocals and guitar meets atmospheric melancholic soundscapes

This was apparently a labour of love between Fife folkster King Creosote and London electronica artist and producer Hopkins, recorded in fits and starts over the last seven years. It’s a beautifully complementary collaboration, Kenny Anderson’s…

Norman Blake and Euros Childs take Jonny on tour

Teenage Fanclub and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci members line up UK gigs

Indie fans of a certain vintage might once have daydreamed about what a collaboration between one of Teenage Fanclub and one of their Welsh equivalents Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci might’ve sounded like. Well wonder no more, because Norman Blake and Euros…

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Post-rock legend's seventh album ventures further into experimental territory

(Rock Action) Now on their seventh album, Mogwai could be forgiven for taking their feet off the pedal. They haven’t. But there is a feeling on Hardcore …, despite the occasional foray into the monolithic riffage of their early days, that the band…

Surrounded - Oppenheimer & Woodstock

(One Little Indian) On their last album, 2008’s The Nautilus Years, Swedish five-piece Surrounded were a virtual facsimile of Mark Linkous’s Sparklehorse. With their musical inspiration sadly no longer with us, the band here have eschewed the…

Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz

(Asthmatic Kitty) An endlessly inventive songwriter and musician, Sufjan Stevens here abandons for the most part the nu-folk banjo-and-piano sound that first got him noticed, replacing it with a mix of offbeat glitchy electronica and wide-eyed studio…

The Walkmen - Lisbon

(Bella Union) This sixth album from New York-based scattershot indie troubadours The Walkmen is something of a consolidation exercise, taking the many disparate sounds that have influenced their back catalogue and combining them into something which…

Weezer - Hurley

(Epitaph) Weezer have been underachieving for most of their career, reaching a nadir with last year’s risible Raditude. A recent switch from Geffen to an indie label has injected a modicum of energy into Hurley, but it’s still a long way from the…

Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

(One Four Seven Records) It’s been a ridiculously long nine-year hiatus for this seminal Yank punk-pop outfit, the band members concentrating on running the pivotal Merge Records instead (and releasing a who’s who of American indie into the bargain).

Afrirampo - We Are Uchu No Ko

(Rock Action) When even the press release refers to them as a ‘lunatic girl duo’, it’s safe to assume we’re not in 4Music territory, and so it transpires on this double-disc release from the recently disbanded Japanese pair. There is an unhinged…

Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

(Young Gods) ‘Uncompromising’ would be the best way to sum up legendary post-punk experimentalists Swans, a band who once had the reputation for being the loudest in the history of music. Michael Gera is back after a fourteen-year hiatus with a…

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul

(EMI) The recent suicide of Mark Linkous, aka. Sparklehorse imbues this posthumous release with oppressive waves of melancholy, but this often-inspired record – heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure – rises above such considerations to stand…

Tim Thornton - Death of an Unsigned Band

(Jonathan Cape) The internal wranglings of unsigned indie bands is fertile territory for dramatic tension, as well as self-aware comedy, and so it is with this second novel from Tim Thornton, a veteran of plenty contract-free groups himself…