Jason Lytle – Yours Truly, The Commuter

Jason Lytle - Yours Truly, The Commuter

When a former (or indeed current) member of any band you like releases a solo record, I always think it’s best to try wherever possible to treat it as a completely separate entity to the band’s output. However, in the case of Jason Lytle, it’s difficult to view his debut effort Yours Truly, the Commuter outside the context of Grandaddy.

The album has all the ingredients you would expect from a Jason Lytle album. It’s bursting with melodies, often masked with fuzziness and occasionally backed up with nice electro touches. His delivery is as woozy and forlorn as ever, which makes it increasingly affecting as he enters his 40s.

On the record’s title track, Lytle leaves us in no doubt about his feelings regarding the recent past, and his hopes for the future: “Last thing I heard I was left for dead… I may be limping/But I’m coming home”. This is a bold statement of defiance, tellingly placed as the album opener. It encapsulates the bruised sense of hope which few people can generate as well as Jason Lytle. … Continue Reading

Manic Street Preachers – Journal For Plague Lovers

Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers

It’s now 14 years since Richey Edwards disappeared, and in that time Manic Street Preachers have become a very different band indeed. Mondeo-man aside, most Manics fans would accept they have never hit the creative heights without him that they did with him. So, the news that Journal For Plague Lovers would be recorded with lyrics left behind by Richey has created more anticipation than a band’s ninth album has any right to.

Having managed to sit on these notebooks for so long, the dilemma must have burned constantly in James, Nicky and Sean’s minds: When, and indeed, if, they should ever commit these to tape. Why they decided to wait so long is unclear. Regardless of the answer to this, one thing is clear. They have managed to sidestep the biggest banana skin in their path since Everything Must Go, and delivered their best album in years. … Continue Reading

Passion Pit – The Reeling

Passion Pit

This time a year ago, Passion Pit were on very few people’s radars. That altered with the Chunk of Change EP, half an hour of cute, vibrant electro-pop. They even came ready-packaged with their own convenient little piece of indie mythology, that the EP was originally recorded by the band’s mainstay Michael Angelakos as a Valentine’s Day gift for his girlfriend.

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Camera Obscura, Newcastle Carling Academy 2

Camera Obscura

April 21st, 2009

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The Legends – Over And Over

The Legends - Over And Over

Let us get one thing out of the way from the off; The Legends is a terrible name for a band. It conjures up images of landfill Britpop revivalists, paunchy 35-year-old blokes down your local, playing Stone Roses covers convinced they are the reincarnation of Saint Gallagher.

But it seems the band’s mainstay Johan Angergård is a very busy chap indeed, serving time in two other bands and having founded Labrador Records, home of many of Sweden’s leading pop luminaries, so perhaps we can forgive him this one. Perhaps he just didn’t have enough time to pick a good name for his band (which is really just Angergård’s own project, in spite of his lurid claims of having eight others in the band). Fortunately for our Johan, his musical talents are far more on the button than his ability to pick out an appropriate moniker.

Having left us in 2006 with Facts and Figures, a highly enjoyable record of dreamy pop laced through with electro touches, he’s back with Over and Over, a very different animal indeed. … Continue Reading

Classic album: Kenickie – At The Club

Kenickie - At The Club

So it’s early 1997. Oasis are a matter of months away from strapping Britpop to their motorbike and heaving its tired carcass over the metaphorical shark. Blur have already evolved their way out of the scene by indulging their Pavement fantasies on their eponymous classic. And Kenickie, with characteristically disastrous timing are about to unleash their debut album At The Club.

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Pocket Promise – I Burnt The Roller Disco

Pocket Promise - I Burnt The Roller Disco

In 2008, Northern Irish quartet Pocket Promise released their debut EP Waving at Strangers. This was an introspective, occasionally moody affair, and you’d have been forgiven for thinking that this was heavily foretelling of their future direction.

However, a year or so on, they’ve only gone and served us with a right old curveball in the form of their first single ‘I Burnt the Roller Disco’. Just when we might have been expecting more gorgeously haunting melodies, they’ve slapped us round the face with a slice of the purest guitar pop. In fact, it’s a song which wouldn‘t sound out of place on the first Soulwax record.

Where Waving at Strangers’ five tracks were mostly piano-driven, ‘I Burnt the Roller Disco’ skips along on a playful guitar line. The cheeky melody is an interesting counterpoint to Cormac Fee’s ever-wistful vocals, both of which underpin the none-more-catchy chorus. … Continue Reading