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.
Castanets – Texas Rose Thaw & The Beasts
Every rose has a thorn and so too does the fifth album by Raymond Raposa's folk-beat one man band Castanets.
Owen Pallett – Heartland
From Final Fantasy to something more pallettable Canada's Owen Pallett continues to enthrall with his third album which gets to right to the heart.
Simon Goddard – Mozipedia
The ultimate bible for Morrissey and Smiths fans, Mozipedia sorts the Suedehead from the Southpaw.
Who The Hell Are… The Fierce & The Dead?
With their debut album If It Carries On Like This We're Moving to Morecombe, London post-rock quartet The Fierce & The Dead left an indelible impression at Webcuts HQ. It was an album that defied categorisation and challenged perceptions of the post-rock genre, not only from the exceptionally long-winded and unselfconscious title, but in the way it fused elements of post-rock with hardcore, ambient soundscapes and jazz/funk experimentation. It was as if The Fierce & The Dead wanted to sound like all bands, and none, which intrigued us enough to want to find out more.
Contiuum Books 33 1/3 – Television, Rolling Stones, Dinosaur Jr
Behind every great album is more often than not, an even greater story waiting to be told. The pursuit for higher understanding of artists and their most influential pieces of work and how the two came to pass has long been the ultimate goal of the ardent music fan who thrives on having every recorded nuance and historical detail mapped out like a combined atlas and encyclopedia of the human body. One of the more indispensible series of music books published that actually does, more or less, what is expected above, has been Continuum's 33 1/3. With the recent addition of The Rolling Stones Some Girls, Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me and Television's Marquee Moon to their honour roll, 33 1/3 show no sign of scraping the bargain bin anytime soon.
The Strokes – Angles
Thumbs down for the skinny ties and tight jeans brigade on their fourth go-round. Surely it can't be worse than First Impressions Of Earth?
Pernice Brothers – Goodbye, Killer
All killer, no filler, Joe Pernice and Co. turn up the volume and turn in one of their most enjoyable records to date.
The Earthmen – Whoever’s Been Using This Bed
It was the Johnny Marr guitar flourishes at the start that first sucked me in. Here is the moment when a band who've been doggedly plying their guitar pop trade since the early 90s
Luke Haines – 21st Century Man
Luke Haines looks back at the 20th Century, and takes pop shots at the maligned and those who got left behind in typical Haines fashion.
The Church – Untitled #23
Moving on from Uninvited, Like The Clouds to Untitled #23, The Church near the end of the alphabet but not the end of their career.
The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
The Decemberists discard the costumes and dispense with the theatre slipping into more familiar musical threads on album number 6.
Belle & Sebastian – Los Angeles – 8 October 2010
On an odd rainy night in downtown Hollywood, weather befit more for their homeland than ours, Belle and Sebastian, Glaswegian art school rockers of yore, played to a sold out crowd of mostly thirty-somethings, brave enough to stand outside...in not just any ordinary venue. Instead, they stylishly bowed and plucked their instruments amongst the mausoleums and graves of some of Los Angeles’ elite. Adding to the macabre setting was the screening of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting that preceded the show. Taking the stage, B&S lead singer Stuart Murdoch asked “Did you see me? I was in the bar scene!”.
Mercury Rev – Australian Interview (Static, 2009)
Touring Australia on the bequest of the all-conquering Coldplay, Mercury Rev stopped into visit Static's Chris Berkley to talk about their latest album Snowflake Midnight and an impressive career that cannot be reigned in by simple film analogies.
The Honeys – Interview with Bruce Begley about Star Baby (2008)
All my favourite bands break up too soon. Some dissolve and leave no trace they ever existed, others leave behind a body of work, be it that beguiling debut or just one crucial single that
Faker – Be the Twilight
Capitol/EMI, 2007 [9/10] There is a litany of bands that make the decision to pack their bags and move to Los Angeles to try and catch a spark of what makes the town such a