The Student Playlist

Showcasing the Best New Music, Curating the Classics

Category Reviews

REVIEW: Hurts – ‘Surrender’ (Sony)

by Matthew Langham Manchester synthpop duo Hurts, consisting of Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson, return with their third album Surrender, two years after Exile which charted at a rather disappointing Number 9 in the UK album charts. Back when they started, their singles including ‘Better Than Love’ and ‘Wonderful Life’ did particularly well in the UK and even better in Germany, so this slump in commercial fortunes was unexpected.

REVIEW: The Enemy – ‘It’s Automatic’ (VMA Records)

by Ed Biggs Those who confidently maintain that critics don’t make a blind bit of difference to an artist’s fortunes might want to consider the fate of The Enemy. Having found a modicum of success with their revivalist debut We’ll Live And Die In These Towns in 2007, their second album Music For The People was released two years later to some breathtakingly savage reviews (particularly the memorable pay-off line in

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REVIEW: Wavves – ‘V’ (Warner Bros. / Ghost Ramp)

by Ed Biggs The impressive ascent of Wavves to major label status hasn’t sat particularly well with the group’s lead singer Nathan Williams. Their fourth album Afraid Of Heights, released in 2013, was a more expansive take on Wavves’ lo-fi, scuzzy aesthetics, but didn’t particularly satisfy anybody. Following which, Williams hooked up with Dylan Baldi’s post-hardcore-punk outfit Cloud Nothings for No Life For Me for some riotous, minimalist catharsis just a

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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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