Lightspeed Champion – Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You
Dev Hynes brings us more songs of bittersweet romance on his sophomore release as Lightspeed Champion.
PJ Harvey & John Parish – A Woman A Man Walked By
We took at poll at Webcuts, and PJ Harvey is most definitely not a woman one of us would walk by.
Divine FIts – Britt Daniel Interview (2012)
Divine Fits may be an unfamiliar name, but the people behind it no doubt lurk in your record collection under their original outfits. Better known as Britt Daniel from Spoon, Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade,
Deerhunter – Australian Interview with Bradford Cox (Static, 2009)
Deerhunter's willowy singer-guitarist and stand-up comic in the making Bradford Cox entered the 2Ser studios to trade words with Static's Chris Berkley about all things in the Deerhunter-verse.
They Might Be Giants – Join Us
Join Us finds They Might Be Giants at their "quirkiest, catchiest and most clever", which is simply music to our old-school fan ears.
Okkervil River – Brisbane – 3 May 2009
The highlights of the night are rightly saved for the encore; “Blue Tulip” combines both delicate folk and heavier rock modes with an acoustic beginning slowly building to a layered, cathartic second half that envelopes the Zoo in a thick haze of distorted bliss.
Warpaint – London – 26 August 2010
It’s shows like this which give birth to the very nature of rock and roll. The hip-swaying sounds of a band as they rock back and forth, eyes closed, mouths pressed against the microphone with their feet marking the beat. It’s an undeniably sexual thing. This isn't news. It’s why they tried to ban Elvis in the 50’s. He turned young girls on, and it wasn’t so much the man, but the music, the stage, the sweat, the motion -- the rock and roll of it all. Wedged together in this barely ventilated Old Street basement, Los Angeles' Warpaint are presiding over something that had this been the 50's, would've gotten them banned too.
Plants and Animals – La La Land
For a band who call their music "post-classic rock", Canada's Plants and Rags have at least one thing going for them.
Future of the Left – Travels With Myself and Another
To hell with good intentions - Future of the Left's second album blows everything else out of the water.
Grouplove – Never Trust A Happy Song
Energetic indie-rock from LA's Grouplove but watch out for "the boring half of the record". Whoops.
M83 – Saturdays = Youth
Virgin, 2008 [7/10] I have a very vivid memory of M83's previous album Before the Dawn Heals Us being played at a thunderous volume while sleeping at a friend's house early one morning, and it
R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now
With appearances from Peaches and Patti Smith, R.E.M. show no signs of wear and tear in their fourth decade of making music.
HTRK, Ipso Facto, ROMANCE – London – 24 July 2009
Ipso Facto recently trimmed the fat, excising keyboardist Cherish Kaya in favour of the perfect rock triangle. The sound is now suitably streamlined, focussed and finessed -- the girls now move a like well-oiled, well-coiled machine.
Washed Out – Riding the Chillwave (2011)
As 2011 continues to reveal an abundance of new artists and great music, it's of no surprise that one of the more anticipated debut albums was that of 28-year-old Atlanta based songwriter and producer Ernest Greene, AKA Washed Out. Full of blissful harmonies and gently shifting arrangements, augmented with hip-hop beats and samples, Within And Without quickly became the preferred summer spin at Webcuts. Static's Chris Berkley recently caught up with Ernest to talk about all things Within And Without -- recording the album, the process behind it, and amongst other things, 10CC's "I'm Not In Love" and the 'raunchy' cover art.
Fink – Sort of Revolution
You say you want a revolution? Well, Fink's folk-tinged Sort of Revolution falls sort of... short.
St. Vincent – Actor
The honeymoon of Marry Me is over for Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, as she sets her gaze on the big stage in Actor.