Rachel Devine

Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers - The Arches, Glasgow, Sat 21 Jan 2012

Accomplished musicianship but work in progress lacks intensity

1 Feb 2012

The comparisons with country greats have been made in abundance – Iris DeMent, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch – but Zoe Muth is a singer-songwriter with unique talents. The voice is strong, the tunes engaging and the lyrics, which form bleak but…

Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier to play Celtic Connections 2012

Material from Sadier's solo album The Trip, plus Stereolab songs

6 Jan 2012

In 2009, when Stereolab announced plans to go on indefinite hiatus, the group’s spectral-voiced singer Laetitia Sadier prepared for a life away from making music. Her other project, the pop quintet Monade, closed for business the same year. Suddenly…

Five picks from Celtic Connections 2012

Featuring Zoe Muth, Jack Bruce, King Creosote and Jon Hopkins and Vieux Farka Touré

6 Jan 2012

Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers The year in Americana 2011 belongs to Gillian Welch and the release of her album The Harrow & the Harvest, but amongst a promising field of young female country singers, Zoe Muth stands out. With her ear for an instant…

Exposure: Dead Boy Robotics

Edinburgh's avant synth-pop outfit, who released their self-titled debut album in November on Tape

6 Jan 2012

The name Dead Boy Robotics must be an obscenely cool reference to an obscure sci-fi tome, right? No, they came up with the name all by themselves. It fits pretty well as it happens; they describe their sound as an amalgam of ‘laptop bleeps, synth…

Jonnie Common - Mono, Glasgow, Sun 27 Nov 2011

Triumphant show from the skilled electronica musician and friends

13 Dec 2011

In August Jonnie Common, founder of the now defunct trio Down the Tiny Steps, released his debut album Master of None. In real terms, the event passed without a great deal of fanfare and yet critical acclaim was heaped upon Common by those lucky and…

Kelly Rowland - Here I Am

Sounding like a hastily assembled attempt to cash in on X Factor fame

7 Dec 2011

(Island) Released in the US in July, Kelly Rowland’s latest album Here I Am has hit the shores of the UK, presumably in a not-in-any-way cynical attempt to cash in on her X Factor fame. Frankly most of it sounds like it has been hastily assembled in…

Archive Trails - Artists making new work from old photos and songs from Scotland's past

Scottish folk ballads reworked via song, video and puppetry

21 Sep 2011

After months of delving through old photos and songs, three performers aim to bring to life Scotland’s long-lost folk ballads through experimental vocals, video and glove puppets. Rachel Devine reports

Kurt Vile & The Violators, with Woods - Stereo, Glasgow, Tue 6 Sep 2011

Philadelphia native’s heartland rock lineage pokes through

16 Sep 2011

The Kurt Vile tour package comes with an opening act equal to the main event. New York spectral folk combo Woods are friends and associates of Vile - frontman Jeremy Earl owns Woodsist records, the label which released Vile’s first two records. It’s…

Rod Jones & The Birthday Suit set for UK tour

Idlewild guitarist learns drums for second solo album

24 Aug 2011

When Idlewild took indefinite leave in 2010, it appeared guitarist Rod Jones would follow singer Roddy Woomble down the folk route. After all, 2009’s A Sentimental Education suggested a man at one with his acoustic guitar. When he sat down to write and…

Fingerstyle guitarist Andy McKee Glasgow and Edinburgh dates

Virtuoso guitar plucker who made his name on YouTube

28 Jul 2011

In 2006 American ‘fingerstyle’ guitarist Andy Mckee joined the YouTube sensation club when he posted a video of himself performing his song ‘Drifting’. It has to be seen and heard to be believed – nearly 78,000,000 hits and climbing – but McKee is…

Niki King & The Elements - It’s All Good

New York-based Scottish jazz vocalist with new band and soul-funk sound

13 Jul 2011

(Soul Route Records) When Edinburgh jazz vocalist Niki King relocated to New York at the end of last year, it was inevitable that the city would lend its magic to her creative impulses. So, with the backing of her new ten-piece New York band, The…

The return of The Zephyrs

Edinburgh band back after five years away

15 Aug 2010

Starting a family tends to get in the way of a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. For Edinburgh five-piece, The Zephyrs, whose last album Bright Yellow Flowers on a Dark Double Bed was released in 2005, it was a couple of kids and a desire to take a break from…

Singles & downloads - 30th June 2010

7 Jul 2010

The great thing about Super Adventure Club is that they don’t take themselves too seriously – which is ideal as it’s impossible to take them seriously. ‘Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle’ (Armellodie Records) ●●● is a highly strung burst of weird psychedelic…

Kylie Minogue - Aphrodite

24 Jun 2010

(Parlophone) There is so much goodwill aimed in the direction of the Antipodean pop princess, she is permitted to release an average album every so often. And All the Lovers is an extremely average album. It starts brightly enough with the title…

T in the Park 2010: Dirty Projectors Interview

16 Jun 2010

Rachel Devine talks to Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth about obsessions, artistic vision and the business of making music

The Fox Hunt - Nowhere Bound

16 Jun 2010

The Fox Hunt are a bluegrass/alt. country band from West Virginia who manage to stand out from the densely packed crowd, primarily down to the fact they write above average tunes. They have banjo, fiddle, mandolin and upright bass in their repertoire…

Dan Sartain

1 Jun 2010

Dan Sartain bounds onto the stage, guitar in hand, to whoops of delight from a mostly male crowd. He is not the kind of guy you bring home to mom – which is why all guys want to be him – he’s more like the one upon whom your mum secretly harbours a…

The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You

14 Apr 2010

(Sony) The Avett brothers Scott and Seth have been making music since 2000, but this is their major label debut. Produced by Rick Rubin, whose input guarantees a certain level of success, it’s an excellent collection of songs – an example of…

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.

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…

Drever, McCusker and Woomble

18 Sep 2008

FOLK There comes a time in most rock musicians’ careers when they long to swap the frenetic rock’n’roll lifestyle for something more sedate. After a decade of touring the world with Idlewild, Roddy Woomble’s inclination of late has been towards folk…

Jock Tamson’s Bairns - Child's play

14 Aug 2008

Bands have a saying that you are only as young as your youngest member. That places Jock Tamson’s Bairns at about 33 years old, the age of their newest member, the fiddler Anna Wendy Stevenson, who joined the legendary Scottish folk combo in 2006. ‘I…

Kristin Hersh

After the flood

7 Aug 2008

To the casual observer, Kristin Hersh is a bundle of contradictions. Just seconds into our conversation she is gabbing away like an old friend, expounding on her one-woman show Paradoxical Undressing, the tale of a tumultuous teenage life when, in the…

Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir

7 Aug 2008

They may be only four in number but there are times when the collective voices of the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir soar as strong and pure as a 100-strong ensemble. While they make us guess at the tendency of their religious beliefs there is no…

Glasgow Americana Festival - Jason Ringenberg

22 May 2008

If there was ever a singer who fits the dewy-eyed, British notion of Americana as thinking man’s country music, it would be Jason Ringenberg. With the social conscience of Steve Earle, the cheekbones of (a young) Johnny Cash, the punk aesthetic of Joey…