by Ed Biggs The final instalment of the triptych of masterpieces that made up Bob Dylan’s imperial phase of the mid-1960s, Blonde On Blonde is arguably the most impressive album he has ever recorded. Thought to be the first ever ‘double album’ in rock history, his seventh album is an exhaustive (but not exhausting) tour through Dylan’s ever-evolving musical and songwriting repertoire.
by Ed Biggs Given the endless summers, sun, surfing and convertibles with which The Beach Boys’ early career is always associated, the manner in which they delivered Pet Sounds, one of the very first undisputed masterpieces in pop, was rather curious and somewhat unexpected. Its release certainly blindsided many at the time, as critics were baffled by this resplendent, carefully orchestrated and not entirely danceable song cycle of love, heartbreak, depression,
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by Ed Biggs Having recently passed twin milestones – the release of their thirteenth studio album Super and the 30th anniversary of their first, Please – it seems like the ideal time to take stock of the Pet Shop Boys’ career and their impact on pop music. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have adapted to keep themselves on or ahead of the curve for three decades, and still retain that sense
by Ed Biggs Marking pretty much the precise point at which dance music became epic, Alex Paterson turned an on-off DJing gig into a fully-fledged project with The Orb’s first studio album after years of EPs and singles. Sprawling over nearly two hours, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld certainly doesn’t short change on the promise of its title.
by Ed Biggs The story of The Monks would surely have been written for a movie script if it hadn’t actually happened in real life. You can picture it on the big screen: five American GIs stationed in Germany during the ‘60s pop revolution and the outbreak of the Vietnam War, form their own group out of frustration and boredom. Honing their basic garage rock sound into guttural, twisted but undeniably
by Ed Biggs A quarter of a century after the release of Spiderland, the second and final studio album by the short-lived Louisville four-piece Slint, it’s extremely difficult to imagine the state of the modern guitar music scene without it. Released on Corey Rusk’s Chicago-based Touch And Go label, one of the impressive network of indies that made up the 1980s American underground, it sold virtually nothing at the time, and
by Ed Biggs Much more than most reunions, the return of Sleater-Kinney in 2015 after nearly a decade on hiatus didn’t just feel right, it felt necessary. When they called it a day in 2006 shortly after their excellent seventh album The Woods, singer-guitarist Corin Tucker, guitarist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss had built up a bulletproof reputation, with a substantial cult fanbase and enough critical praise to match some
by Ed Biggs Although they’re one of the most iconic and important guitar bands of all time, Ramones sold way more shirts than they ever did records. As Stereogum pointed out in 2015, if everyone who owns a Ramones T-shirt had instead bought one of their albums, they’d be one of the biggest bands in history.
by Ed Biggs Behind the production desk, Steve Albini is one of the most celebrated creative forces in alternative music, with a reputation for helping craft music as harsh and uncompromising as his own attitudes towards what he regards as bullshit, or too mainstream. As a man who has repeatedly turned down major labels and artists unless he shares some kind of artistic simpatico with them, Nirvana’s In Utero and PJ
by Ed Biggs The vast majority of albums need a sort of cooling-off period before being considered as a classic, but for Arctic Monkeys’ debut that status was conferred instantly, and with good justification. Not since Definitely Maybe had so many breathless superlatives been uttered about a British guitar debut album, and neither had such massive sales figures been delivered on the back of such hype. This was a band that
