by Ed Biggs These kinds of stories just don’t happen anymore. The universal acclaim and critical attention given to their previous album Let It Be the year before allowed The Replacements, one of the most volatile, unpredictable and legendarily drunk bands in American history, to make the step up to the big time in 1985. Just like their cross-town Minneapolis rivals Hüsker Dü, they left their indie label Twin/Tone and signed
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by Ed Biggs The rapid ascension of Pulp from perennial outsiders to chart toppers and festival headliners during the mid ‘90s, and the multi-platinum sales figures of their 1995 album Different Class, is the most dramatic illustration of the effect that Britpop had upon the British music scene. In pretty much no other place or time could such a band have achieved so much so quickly.
by Ed Biggs Does Ty Segall actually sleep? Fans of the Californian crate-digger will know that he releases a solo album once a year, as well fitting in full-time membership of no fewer than seven other bands, one of which is the friends-only project Fuzz. Forming it alongside his long-time buddy Charles Mootheart (also a guitarist in the Ty Segall band) back in 2013, their self-titled debut was a hermetically-sealed time
by Ed Biggs While the commercial pomp and circumstance of Britpop was in full flow on the other side of the Atlantic in 1995, the biggest American guitar acts of the day were turning inwards, away from their audiences and exploring the limits of their own talents, not necessarily with any regard to what critics or fans thought about them. Pavement’s sprawling Wowee Zowee, Pearl Jam’s difficult but ultimately rewarding Vitalogy
by Ed Biggs Are You Alone? is the sixth album by the mainly studio-bound project Majical Cloudz, headed by the industrious Canadian songwriter Devon Welsh and his technological wizkid sidekick Matthew Otto. 2013’s excellent Impersonator, an unnervingly personal experience set to electronic minimalism, put them on the international indie radar, landing the duo a support slot on Lorde’s world tour, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Polaris Prize, making their new
by Ed Biggs American indie auteur Bradford Cox has recovered very quickly from a serious car crash in December 2014 to record and release his seventh album with Deerhunter. The accident gave him “perspective” and cause to ruminate on his own mortality, even more than he does so already (Cox suffers from Marfan syndrome, a condition where his mere physicality poses a threat to his life). Fading Frontier therefore has an
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
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
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
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 –
