The Student Playlist

Showcasing the Best New Music, Curating the Classics

Posts by Ed Biggs

REVIEW: Alex G – ‘Beach Music’ (Domino)

by Ed Biggs Philadelphia songwriter Alexander Giannascoli, recording under the name Alex G, released six albums of self-recorded, bedroom-spun indie in five years, beginning in 2010 with RACE and ending in the impressive but occasionally messy DSU 16 months ago. That quiet, consistent effort and its charmingly self-effacing results have brought him to the attention of Domino, one of the biggest and most prestigious indies in the game, giving him the

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REVIEW: The Ordinary Boys – ‘The Ordinary Boys’ (Treat Yourself Records)

by Matthew Langham It’s been an awfully long time since Preston entered the Big Brother house and committed what many would call career suicide. Dating the airheaded Chantelle Houghton, flouncing off ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’, Preston became a professional celebrity, and his actual band The Ordinary Boys seemed like a sideline by comparison. They lost all credibility very quickly from that point, and their last album, 2006’s How To Get Everything

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REVIEW: Editors – ‘In Dream’ (PIAS)

by Matthew Langham Editors, those hardy survivors of the post-punk revival in British music over a decade ago, have endured a rough ride since the departure of their ex-guitarist Chris Urbanowicz who left due to a change in musical direction following their move away from atmospheric guitar pop on 2005’s The Back Room and its heavier-than-hell successor An End Has A Start.

REVIEW: Deafheaven – ‘New Bermuda’ (Anti-)

by Ed Biggs Nominally beginning life as a black metal band in San Francisco at the beginning of the decade, George Clarke’s Deafheaven very quickly transcended the limitations and codes of the genre to win fans from all across the independent music community with 2013’s spectacular Sunbather. With massive arcs of impenetrable narrative, seguing from one discipline to another sprawling over ten-minute long tracks, Sunbather’s sound was a broad church –

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REVIEW: Rudimental – ‘We The Generation’ (Asylum / Atlantic / Black Butter)

by Ed Biggs With their unthreatening, chart-bothering mixture of drum’n’bass with elements of other disparate urban genres, Rudimental enjoyed a meteoric ascent to the top of the UK charts back in 2013. Though they released some unquestionably catchy singles – ‘Waiting All Night’ and ‘Not Giving In’ were totally ubiquitous – their debut album Home took an unimaginative, mass-produced cookie-cutter approach to their mixture of genres, resulting in a grindingly average

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REVIEW: Shopping – ‘Why Choose’ (Fatcat)

by Ed Biggs East London three-piece Shopping, consisting of singer Rachel Aggs, Billy Easter and Andrew Milk, have that most elusive and vanishingly rare quality in modern music: that immediately detectable sense of ‘band as gang’. Their funky, punky 2013 debut Consumer Complaints was entirely self-released, and its small-scale, localised success has earned them a promotion to Fatcat Records, an indie with a more nationwide clout.

REVIEW: Mercury Rev – ‘The Light In You’ (Bella Union)

by Ed Biggs For indie fans of a certain age, the mention of Mercury Rev will get them misty-eyed through reminiscing. Sharing an experimental, dreamy pop aesthetic with the likes of The Flaming Lips but unfairly overlooked as a kind of junior partner, their 1998 masterpiece Deserter’s Songs rightly swept the end-of-year critics lists, and its underrated follow-up All Is Dream in 2001 was very nearly as excellent. However, they suffered

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REVIEW: Swim Deep – ‘Mothers’ (Sony)

by Matthew Langham Birmingham quintet Swim Deep return with the follow-up to their 2013 debut record Where The Heaven Are We, a modest artistic success which helped the band gain a significant fan base and the attentions of major label Sony, when all things ‘90s were being snapped up left, right and centre. Mothers is a natural continuation from their baggy-influenced debut which featured hit track The Sea’. With the addition

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CLASSIC ’90s: Oasis – (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?

by Ed Biggs Whenever a new band breaks out and receives hype from the music press, the reaction from the general public is often sceptical or scornful. “They’ll never be as big as The Beatles” was something that generations of new music lovers have from their parents or grandparents. But for a fleeting period in the mid-nineties, Oasis actually were, and that status came off the back of their gargantuan second

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REVIEW: U.S. Girls – ‘Half Free’ (4AD)

by Matthew Langham Toronto-born Meghan Remy, a.k.a. U.S. Girls, is now onto her sixth record, with Half Free being her debut on legendary indie imprint 4AD. Naturally compared to female contemporaries including Holly Herndon, St. Vincent and Grimes, Half Free follows on from her accessible experimental 2012 record Gem. The vast majority of Half Free is genuinely, startlingly different and this is also representative of the lyrics which are dark, evocative

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