Pioneering the revival of electronic influences in British indie at a point when unspeakably bad post-Arctic Monkeys acts were dominating the national scene, Friendly Fires…
A new album from Sleater-Kinney is always a momentous occasion, but the circumstances surrounding the release of their new ninth album The Center Won’t Hold…
Before releasing Any Human Friend, Marika Hackman talked about this new creative chapter of hers as a bolder and more explicit one. The English singer-songwriter…
Who knew that the over-romanticised live embodiment of the heartbroken woodsman-bard Justin Vernon will take the road of the bloopy, fuzzy sounds? The likes of…
With a reputation as the madman of modern psych/garage rock, Ty Segall has an eclectic back catalogue of material. His past releases show the range…
It seems like the sudden, virtually overnight rise to stardom of Clairo has been most surprising to Claire Cottrill herself, as her delicate demeanour and…
Check out our playlist over at Spotify of all the best new music that's been released so far in August. Foals have released a brand new banger…
The story of an electronic artist founding then nurturing a label is not an unusual one. Normally offering the opportunity to build within a scene…
Check out our playlist of all the best new music released in July 2019 over at Spotify, or scroll below! Happy listening! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1rSDP4LssfVRr7tM7HwMzJ?si=omnvu8NRSG6Yk3lsqlCkLA
Gigs & Festivals
Indie Banquet XIV @ Hyde Park Book Club, Saturday 17th August There’s other things than just Ed Sheeran at Roundhay going on in Leeds this…
Cultdreams @ Headrow House, Tuesday 13th August Self-identifying as “sad lo-fi punks” and formerly known as Kamikaze Girls until earlier this year, Brighton’s Cultdreams are…
Flipper @ Brudenell Social Club, Saturday 3rd August A tour to mark the 40th anniversary of the seminal and often entertainingly shambolic San Franciscan band…
2000s
Looking back on the decade that’s passed since the quiet release of The xx’s debut album, it’s slightly strange to think of xx as a…
Big voice, big presence and big sound – the grandeur of Florence Welch and her Machine is something anyone who’s ever had a glimpse of…
It was about Dirty Projectors’ incredible breakout album Bitte Orca that Time Magazine’s Josh Tyrangiel birthed the immortal critical phrase “making the critic’s job undoable”…
1990s
Before the globe-conquering success of their 1999 album Californication, notorious Californian funk and alternative rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers were in a state of turmoil…
Much was made a couple of years ago when Radiohead’s OK Computer turned 20 years old, with dozens of think-pieces and commentators pointing out the…
It’s been written about to death at this point, but it’s still difficult to truly emphasise how baffling Weezer’s career has been. After tearing up…
1980s
In the aftermath of their legendary party-starting debut Licensed To Ill in 1986, Beastie Boys were in a curious place. They moved to the West…
Since their inception in the late ‘70s in the wake of punk, Robert Smith and the rotating cast of The Cure have become a globally…
Three decades after the release of their self-titled debut album, there’s very little left to say about The Stone Roses at this point in history.…
1970s
The punk explosions of the late Seventies were widely imagined as a ‘year zero’ for pop music, a point where artists should rip things up…
Can there possibly be a more famous cult album in existence than Unknown Pleasures? In the four decades since its release in June 1979, it’s…
By the second half of 1978, David Bowie was in a curious point in his career. He’d left Berlin in February of that year, having…
1960s
In contrast to the mythologising that often surrounds rock star deaths, the story of Nick Drake is not a remotely glamorous one. Instead, it is…
The ‘rock opera’ has had a chequered history as it has evolved in the half-century since the archetype was established in 1969. Like its close…
In between the dazzling avant-garde architecture of that 1967 debut album, still rightly celebrated today as one of the greatest albums in history, and the…
As a companion piece to our annual end-of-year albums list published earlier this month, The Student Playlist presents The Top 50 Tracks of 2018. You…
Although it’s been a year pock-marked with political and social uncertainty, that sense of upheaval and tension has resulted in some pretty fine art being…
Revisiting any period in popular music is always interesting, insofar as one’s memories of it change and evolve as time passes and the present gets…
It’s been almost two decades since Pavement were active in any meaningful way, the group’s component parts quietly parting ways in the pursuit of solo…
It doesn’t matter how big you might have been, ten years is a long time to be away. Certainly enough for an entirely new generation…
Dozens of icons of the world of independent and alternative music, as well as many in the world of pop, paid tribute to Scott Walker…
