The Bangles – All Over The Place / Different Light
The Bangles chart-conquering Different Light and their slighty less impressive debut album get the reissue treatment.
Suzanne Vega – Close Up Vol. 1 Love Songs
A thematic collection of stripped down tracks from Suzanne Vega's songbook, beginning with the love song.
Kaki King – Junior
More depressing pop dressed up espionage style on the fifth album from this diminutive guitar goddess. "Junior", indeed.
Tom McRae – The Alphabet of Hurricanes
If only England had their version of the Wild West, otherwise Tom McRae might've found himself in much stronger grounding.
The Gun Club – Miami / Death Party / The Las Vegas Story
Load the chamber and light a candle for Jeffrey Lee Pierce, it's rockabilly blues-a-go-go with The Gun Club.
Idlewild – Post Electric Blues
Idlewild return with their fan-funded sixth album, offering much talk of Warnings (and Promises). But do they deliver?
The Lemonheads – Varshons
Evan Dando and a cast of several come together to make the ultimate Lemonheads record so far. With an album featuring songs by Wire and Christina Aguilera, it's both "Strange" and "Beautiful".
Kaki King – Mexican Teenagers EP
Diminutive guitar goddess Kaki King gets caught up with the wrong crowd on Mexican Teenagers.
The Vines – Melodia
Cooking Vinyl, 2008 [5/10] How times and fortunes quickly change. Where once The Vines were heralded as being part of some new rock and roll explosion, they became its first liability and not even a doctors note could explain away the fact that the Vines were creating more headlines than they were music. Two albums
Heaven 17 – Live at Last
Cooking Vinyl, 2008 [1/10] For those unaware, Heaven 17 existed on the periphery of the pioneering electronic new wave scene. They didn't have the pop flair of the Human League or the sequined glitz of ABC. Releasing a handful of albums sporadically throughout the 80s they never had the repeated chart success of their peers.
Kaki King – Dreaming of Revenge
Cooking Vinyl, 2008 [rating:6.5/10] Having scored a Golden Globe nominated film soundtrack with Eddie Vedder, appeared on recent albums for Tegan and Sara and the Foo Fighters, and being named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the new gods of guitar, you'd think that everything is coming up roses for Kaki King, the 28
Camper Van Beethoven – Popular Songs of Great Enduring Strength and Beauty
Cooking Vinyl, 2008 [7/10] Listening to a Camper Van Beethoven CD is like opening a time capsule to an era where the alternative music scene was more of a nascent beast than what it is now, where bands like REM, The Replacements and Husker Du reigned supreme. The Zappa-influenced Camper Van Beethoven fell somewhere inbetween,
Centro-Matic / South San Gabriel – Dual Hawks
Cooking Vinyl, 2008 [5/10] (Centro-Matic) [7/10] (South San Gabriel) Will Johnson can seemingly do anything. A prolific songwriter, Johnson has spent over a decade playing indie rock in Denton, Texas' Centro-Matic, putting out a succession of albums before splitting his eclecticism in half, looking for a more contemplative approach to making music while still performing
Bauhaus – Go Away White
Cooking Vinyl, 2008 [rating:1/10] Bauhaus' original swansong, released almost 25 years ago now, was a recording halted and hindered by singer Peter Murphy catching pneumonia and being hospitalised, meaning the finished product, entitled Burning From the Inside, was largely put together without him. Despite such an obstacle, ...Inside allowed the band to stretch out and