by Matthew Langham Welsh noise-pop quintet Joanna Gruesome return with the follow-up to their 2013 debut Weird Sister. At just over twenty minutes long, it packs a lot into the record and certainly doesn’t disappoint in terms of content. Produced by MJ of Leeds outfit Hookworms, Peanut Butter has an element of urgency and anxiety about it also reflecting the angst rock of their debut.
by Matthew Langham Born Under Saturn is Django Django’s follow up to their successful 2012 Mercury nominated debut record. Following on from The Beta Band and Syd Barrett-influenced pop on tracks including ‘Default’, they have travelled further in the same direction into a darker pop psychedelia. The group’s leader David Maclean’s brother is a member of The Beta Band, which partly explained the left-field yet curiously pop-oriented nature of their music.
by Ed Biggs Since their 2005 masterpiece Z, My Morning Jacket have been enjoying a status in America similar to that of The Cribs in Britain – probably the country’s biggest ‘small band’. They’ve got a significant cult following, critical adoration and a small impact in wider popular culture, even once appearing in an episode of Seth Macfarlane’s ‘American Dad!’, but they’ve never really broken through into the mainstream.
by Ed Biggs Following the breathless reviews of their signature song ‘Best Of Friends’ that put them on the radar at the end of 2012, Palma Violets scrambled to capitalise on the exposure with the rushed release of their debut album 180, a record that displayed promise but was low on original ideas and ultimately undercooked.
by Ed Biggs Unless you’ve been marooned on a desert island for the last two months, you can’t fail to have noticed all the talk about old-timey folk impersonators Mumford & Sons “going electric” with their third album. The formerly self-identified ‘gentlemen of the road’ have ditched the accordions, banjos, waistcoats and tweed and opted for leather jackets, electric guitars and keyboards.
by Ed Biggs The last decade’s trend for bands to reunite has accelerated to the point where groups that hardly anyone has heard of or cared about the first time round are getting back together to chance their arm at the nostalgia dollar. But at least Scottish rabble-rousers Baby Chaos can point to a brand new record to lend their reformation some artistic credibility.
by Matthew Langham For Danish art-rockers Mew it’s been six years since their last release No More Stories…. Their long awaited sixth effort +- is in a very similar vein to previous releases of MOR-inspired proggy-pop. With the help of Bloc Party’s Russell Lissack on guitar duties on ‘My Complications’, lead singer Jonas Bjerre’s vocals provide the most interesting element to the record. His distinct style draws him comparisons to French
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by Ed Biggs The announcement of the first Blur album in over a decade, and the first with Graham Coxon since 1999, was one of the biggest music news stories of the first part of 2015. We’d had the big reunion (two of them), the emotional catharsis, the burying of hatchets, and for many, that would have been enough. But the existence of The Magic Whip seems to have solidified the
by Matthew Langham It’s been a long time coming for Built To Spill. The Portland-via-Idaho grunge-rock favourites’ last release was in 2009, their seventh studio record There Is No Enemy. The record didn’t generate a great deal of attention at the time, and by 2013 came along lead singer Doug Martsch complained that he felt “directionless”.
by Ed Biggs When Massachusetts native Sadie Dupuis first began Speedy Ortiz as a casual recording nom de plume four years ago, she can’t have presumed that the indie world would be anticipating her third album as much as this in 2015. After an internet release that year called The Death Of Speedy Ortiz, her group attracted the attention of the national rock press in 2013 with Major Arcana, the kind
