by Ed Biggs Having worked with Bombay Bicycle Club on a couple of their albums at the start of the decade, English singer-songwriter Lucy Rose stepped out of the shadows with her enjoyable and compelling debut album Like I Used To, which enjoyed a decent life in the public consciousness, being mined for several singles and used in TV dramas such as ‘Girls’, ‘Skins’ and ‘The Vampire Diaries’.
by Ed Biggs This short but sweet treat by Wavves’ Nathan Williams and Cloud Nothings songwriter Dylan Baldi appeared by surprise on iTunes and Bandcamp right at the end of June, with very little fanfare accompanying it subsequently. Which is a bit of shame, as No Life For Me is a pretty accurate summation of the appeal of both bands collided into a succinct presentation: admittedly, Baldi’s and William’s similarities vastly
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by Ed Biggs Ten years ago, a few people must really have believed that Sufjan Stevens was serious about his ambition to record a concept album about all 50 American states. His splendid 2003 album Michigan had set the ball rolling, and while he interrupted the sequence with 2004’s Seven Swans, it was followed with 2005’s Illinois, the album many consider to be his magnum opus. In fact, Stevens was so
by Ed Biggs About to release their eighth studio album Born In The Echoes next month, The Chemical Brothers’ stellar career has begun its third decade: funny to think it all began because the Beastie Boys’ production team wanted their name back. Known at the very beginning of their career as The Dust Brothers, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons were DJs who began to make their own music using basic samplers
by Ed Biggs Those of you with very sharp musical memories might recall the early ‘90s heyday of The Orb, a cult favourite for those ravers whose favourite part of the night was the 5am chillout room. A dub-influenced ambient duo now currently in its sixth incarnation – German electronic composer Thomas Fehlmann has been working with the ever-present Orb founder Alex Paterson since the late ‘00s – they enjoyed a
by Ed Biggs We’ve been waiting nearly two and a half years for this moment, an absolute eternity in our rapidly churning social media age of hype and backlash. Wolf Alice appeared on radar back in February 2013 with their first single ‘Fluffy’, but their origins go way back to 2010 and their embryonic self-titled EP. Releasing only a couple of singles and EPs since then, the London quartet have been
by Ed Biggs Ever since they first bamboozled the indie scene with their absolutely-anything-goes approach, the perennial problem with Everything Everything is that they’ve always sounded better in theory than in practice. In many ways, their meta approach to influences and culture is perfectly suited to the information age, characterised by social media, news overload and the conflation of the personal and the political. What could be more contemporary than a
by Matthew Langham Shelved alongside the likes of Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, London-based Gengahr have been one of the main critic’s choices for bands to watch in 2015. Following on from their brilliant set at Live At Leeds, their full-length debut A Dream Outside is a melting pot of summery, psychedelic pop hooks. On first listen it might float by without any immediate impact – after all, the air
by Ed Biggs While The Verve may be more famous for their hugely successful third album Urban Hymns (1997), its 1995 predecessor A Northern Soul deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. The sound that would bring them mainstream success two years later, a powerful brand of alternative rock with strong elements of prog and distortion – think Oasis and Spiritualized in equal parts – really began to take shape
by Ed Biggs Active Child is the recording name of New Jersey electronic music artist Pat Grossi, who won plenty of plaudits for his first album You Are All I See in 2011. A porous mixture of electronica, post-dubstep and minimalist pop accentuated by Grossi’s harp-playing skills and his striking falsetto that was developed through a childhood spent in choirs, it was cited by many as an example of the future
