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 Matthew Langham On the first Bank Holiday Saturday in May, The Student Playlist returned to Live At Leeds for a third year in a row. Having enjoyed vintage years in 2013 and 2014 with acts from all manner of musical disciplines, #LAL2015 seemed a bit thin on the ground in terms of established acts, at first glance at least. The bill was crammed with cutting edge indie artists familiar
Continue reading…
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
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”.
With only a couple of days to go until the release of The Magic Whip, their first album in 12 years and first since 1999 with Graham Coxon, what better time to look back at the history of Blur. Starting life at a shambolic yet entertaining art-rock band called Seymour, they signed to indie label Food Records and released their first single ‘I Know / She’s So High’ in October
by Matthew Langham Literate Irish folksters Villagers return with their third album, their first since 2013’s Mercury nominated {Awayland}. Primarily crafted near Dublin, this is Conor O’Brien’s most intimate and revealing record to date, and probably his most accessible. Although it deals with heartache, its all-encompassing sense of melancholia is strangely uplifting and cathartic, achieved through O’Brien’s ability to pull off some tremendous literary references. This is much more of
by Matthew Langham It is rare for a band with a forty year history to sound contemporary, but with a back catalogue of over a dozen records, Wire’s self-titled album fits in nicely with their forward-thinking oeuvre. Two years on from Change Becomes Us, they still maintain their edge with an intriguing experimentation in motorik-driven electronica. The quartet have taken the post-punk riffs and engrained them into sophisticated guitar pop,
by Matthew Langham Listening back to The Wombats’ 2007 debut A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation with the benefit of eight years of hindsight, it’s aged horribly. Granted, it did host a few big tracks which you could guarantee would be on at every shit student indie night – ‘Moving To New York’, ‘Kill The Director’ and their most well-known hit ‘Let’s Dance To Joy Division’ – but the appeal
by Matthew Langham It’s been a whirlwind two years for Liverpool’s Circa Waves. An opening slot on Glastonbury’s Other Stage and build-up of a now very large fan base has now left the four-piece in a strong position in the first quarter of 2015. Their debut record has been a long time coming – fifteen months since the word started getting out – and it makes no bones about its
by Matthew Langham ‘Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress’ is the fifth release by Canadian post-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The release marks the bands first single LP length since their 1997 debut and their second album since returning from their decade-long hiatus. Though the album is four tracks long, it sprawls across forty minutes and can be seen as three movements. The first movement being a slow builder, followed by
