Webcuts Music

The end of winter and the onset of spring then summer in the Southern Hemisphere means one thing. Well it means warmer temperatures obviously but it also means more international tours for us antipodeans starved of name acts over the winter months (excepting Splendour and its sideshows of course). A number of big names have been announced in the past week including The Manic Street Preachers, The Charlatans, Concrete Blonde, The National, Interpol, The Morning Benders and Joan Jett!

“Give me a minute and I’ll blow your minds“. The crowd laughs, so does the man who just uttered those words. The mood, somewhat quiet, respectful, shiftless, is lightened, and Mark Kozelek begins another master-class in tinkling the nylon strings of his Spanish guitar like Liberace would the piano. “I’m old” he breaks the silence again, “I’m fat, I need water, I need lyrics to my songs”. From my pew to the right side of the stage I have to squint to see if it’s not Neil Young sitting there complaining about his arthritis. To Kozelek’s credit, he’s still as ageless as ever, and that gut you were grabbing at? I’m pretty sure you’ve been carrying that for a while now.

Has there ever been a band that promised so much, but delivered so little? I know with an opening statement like that I may as well tell them that their girlfriends/wives are ugly too and be done with it, but once upon a time The Walkmen had their eyes on the prize, but instead decided to move to Tijuana and play like drunk, heartbroken Americanos. To give them credit, they do this really well. But after 5 albums, the soft introspective “why you done gone and left me?” feel that carried through A Hundred Miles Off and You & Me gets a little too familiar. Lisbon, what have you for The Walkmen? What have you for us?

The (Bloc) Party is over. Now, it’s a dance party and there’s nobody here, except Kele and a few diehard Bloc Party fans looking bored.

The new Stars album The Five Ghosts is a focused and streamlined record that in some ways harks back to their synth-pop roots of their first album, albeit being much darker in tone and theme. While Stars’ diminutive front-man Torquil Campbell, and its glamorous front-woman Amy Millan, may get the most of the star light we recently had words with the quiet achiever of the band, Evan Cranley. Evan reveals to us details about the process and direction that the new album took, the decision behind the Séance EP, his jack of all trades role in the band, the novel approach to touring the new songs and how to create a fantastic remix.

Critic proof Canadian indie-poppers release their fifth disc of tunes but like its subject matter we find it lacks substance.

More emotional missives from angry, intense, young American men. What steady diet do they feed you on?

While the new STARS album may be a mixed bag it nonetheless contains several stellar tunes including “We Don’t Want Your Body” which imagines Torquil Campbell and Amy Milan as two sordid lovers in London, lying in the gutter looking up at the stars — figuratively speaking — combining Afropop with arpeggio organ and an [...]

What’s to say about Crystal Castles that hasn’t already been said before? A notorious Canadian electro-duo comprised of Ethan Kath and Alice Glass, Crystal Castles have been a contentious musical presence since the release of their first single “Alice Practice” in 2006. Their second self-titled album was released last month and the evolution of the band’s sound, whilst still maintaining an experimental, aggressive edge, has come under scrutiny by fans and critics alike for the mature, mainstream approach of some of the tracks. Webcuts has no qualms with quaffing from the mainstream, and the Ibiza rave groove of “Celestica” is close to being one of our favourite singles of the year. We also love the zombie-strolling Glass as she and Kath listlessly invade a local London cemetry too. An official video clip from Crystal Castles. How times change… Fan vid makers take that!

The old guard  of alternative rock, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, remixes the new upstarts of punktronica, Crystal Castles, turning their recent single “Celestica” into something more earthly. Taken from their just released second eponymous album (confusing, much?) the track is transformed from a dreamy synth-pop number into a decidedly more rock’n’roll version with guitar and [...]