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.
Okkervil River – The Stand Ins
Jagjaguwar, 2008 The Austin boys in Okkervil River are back with another album and like always it's filled with surprising stories, dense lyrics and great tunes that stick with you. The
Grand Duchy – Petit Fours
Grand who? Just call them Mr. and Mrs. Frank Black and everything will be peachy, or desserty...
The Darling Buds – London – 22 September 2010
You’d be forgiven for having a sense of déjà vu here. Is it 1989? Did The Primitives and The Darling Buds really both play London within a week of each other? Having been absent from the live scene for most of the '90s and all of the past decade, for both bands to surface at the same time is unthinkable. Unthinkable, but pretty damn cool. It brings back memories of a time when the music magazines invented a scene called ‘Blonde’, where bands were lumped together purely based on the colour of the lead singers hair. Which by their way of thinking meant you were either a Blonde, a Goth or in Fairground Attraction.
Cold Cave – Of Dark Days and Light Years (2011)
Cold Cave's debut album of 2009 Love Comes Close was a unique display of synth-oriented mood disorder, venturing out from the bedroom to the dancefloor, filled with idealistic tales of romance and disillusionment. Band leader Wes Eisold’s spin on the world appeared to share a voice (in both dour baritone and content) with Magnetic Fields Stephin Merritt, if he'd spent his adolescence listening to The Cure and Depeche Mode instead of showtunes. On their second album, Eisold moved beyond the testing of the waters that was Love Comes Close and turned its successor, Cherish The Light Years into his dark dream made manifold.
The Charlatans – Who We Touch
Touched by the somewhat friendly eclectic hand of The Charlatans for their tenth album in twenty years.
Shearwater – The Golden Archipelago
Shearwater seem to have run aground on The Golden Archipelago. Not quite paradise, nor a place you'll likely return to soon.
The Horrors – Primary Colours
The Horrors pull off the surprise reinvention act of the century and lift the curse of the sophomore slump forever.
The National – High Violet
Riding high on the charts, The National have found a resounding voice where "High Violet’s loneliest, weightiest moments feel like shared sorrow."
Jay Reatard – Australian Interview (Static, 2009)
Capping off an incredibly busy year with a singles compilation for 2008, Nashville native Jay Reatard has been relentlessly touring the globe and still hasn't stopped to catch his breath. Recently blowing away audiences in
Teenage Fanclub – Shadows
A band of such warmth and light, the only way you'd see a 'shadow' here is if you held this Teenage Fanclub CD up in front of you.
Warpaint – The Fool (Deluxe Edition)
Reissue! Repackage! Warpaint's mesmerising debut gets a little dressing up as we wait for album #2.
Stars – Interview with Evan Cranley on The Five Ghosts (2010)
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.
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.
Devo – Something for Everybody
There are people who write for this website who weren't even born when Devo last made a record. This is not for them.
Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
The title may be Everything Goes Wrong, but to our ears, everything goes right for the Vivian Girls on their sophomore release.