The Low Anthem – Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
Oh my god! The third album from this Rhode Island folk trio proves to be a natural selection.
Hop Farm Festival – Kent – 1-3 July 2011
In the history of modern music festivals, few line-ups could compare with the distinctly 70's flavoured action offered at the Hop Farm Festival last weekend. While The Eagles were wheeled out of retirement as headliners on the first night, the purportedly Morrissey-curated second day included such rock pantheon artists as Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and Patti Smith. All in all, it's a jaw-dropping stroke of genius, with Morrissey having the hardest of acts to follow the swathe these three so cleanly cut through the Kent countryside. Oh, and did we forget to mention Prince was there too?
Destroyer – London – 28 June 2011
How strange to be more than fifteen years into a career and to finally achieve growing, and now glowing, recognition for the music you make. Bands today, the inverse applies, they learn to walk before they can crawl, record a debut they'll never repeat and disappear as if they never existed. Real artists will maintain and nurture their craft regardless of an audience, which more or less, is the story of Dan Bejar. Better known as the wild-card songwriter in Canadian power-pop supergroup The New Pornographers, Bejar's work as Destroyer is like mainlining into Bejar's psyche, which prior to you only got the briefest taste of.
Arcade Fire – Los Angeles – 8 October 2010
You know you've had a good day when you wake up in a resort in Palm Springs and end up almost 24 hours later face down, literally face down, in a plate of tacos in downtown LA, head throbbing and ears ringing. There’s no way to rationalise it, nor the fact that between such decadent highs and lows, Webcuts was in attendance to witness the second night of Arcade Fire’s two night stand at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. On a night where the streets (well, one street) were filled with yellow NYC cabs and fake snow, Arcade Fire required no illusory set-dressing to impress Tinseltown.
Models – God Bless America
The Post-Punk years in Australia were a mixed ground. The key bands of that era were floundering or disbanding while the second wave was about to hit, bands like Hunters and Collectors, Hoodoo Gurus, The
Coco Electrik – Interview (2007)
Former Brisbanite Anne Booty is the leading force behind genre defying Brighton-London based act Coco Electrik. We grill Anne about debut LP Army Behind the Sun, performing live and receive an answer to the question: Are Friends Electrik?
Destroyer – Trouble In Dreams
Rough Trade, 2008 [8/10] Daniel Bejar is the Woody Allen of pop music. His idiosyncratic, poetic touch opens up another world, planting himself square in the middle around a revolving cast of characters (mostly women),
Otouto – Pip
Melbourne four piece Otouto prove that art pop is not a dirty word on their impressive debut album Pip.
Twin Sister – Vampires With Dreaming Kids / Colour Your Life
How many times do you get given a record and for it to feel like a breath of fresh air? Here you are then.
Too Pure Singles Club – Interview with Paul Riddlesworth (2011)
For the last three years the Too Pure Singles Club has been releasing monthly 7" singles to subscribers featuring a selection of rising UK and international alternative acts, many of whom are unknown outside their own country (their own town even). The appeal of a singles club is more than just a piece of vinyl every month by a band you're unlikely to have ever heard of. Actually, that is the appeal. Hit or miss as they can be, you never know which one of these limited run singles will turn out to be your next favourite band.
King Creosote – Flick the Vs
The two fingered salute is vigorously given by Scottish anti-folk hero King Creosote on new album Flick the Vs.
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
Pavement – Quarantine The Past
The smell of reunion is in the air as Pavement's back catalogue is harvested for the new-comers in this career-spanning collection.
Ramona – London – 17 April 2011
It's easy to love Ramona, even though everything about them is so flawless and en pointe, unheard for a scruffy bunch of Brighton by-way-of-New-York rockers. Picks in hand, they transform a handful of chords into polished punk perfection, fronted by the coquettish bleach-blonde tomboy Karen Anne, a second generation Edie and Debbie who knows how to hang from a mic stand like she was hanging from your shoulder. Absent from the stage this year so far, they cycle through their set in a brisk half hour, including encore, and you're crying out for a flubbed note, an unrehearsed run through a song they just wrote in the van, or general indifference to whether anybody is listening.
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.
Spiritualized – Interview with Jason Pierce about Songs in A&E (Static, 2008)
After a break of five years since their last album Amazing Grace, and a near crippling bout of double pneumonia, Spiritualized are back and in perfect health with their finest album to date with Songs