I Used To Be A Sparrow – You Are An Empty Artist

By David Beech

April 22, 2013

Band names can do a lot for a band in this day and age, making them stand out amongst a list of their peers and even allowing listeners to know whether or not they’re going to like the music they make before they’ve even pressed play. As a result, Swedish two-piece I Used To Be A Sparrow immediately grabbed my attention appealing to my slightly emo sensibilities in much the same way that both I Was A Cub Scout and The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die did before them. However I Used To Be A Sparrow are not an emo band. What they are is a band that makes an impressively full sound for just two men, and a band whose blend of electronic pop-rock shines and shimmers as if touched by a first frost.  … Continue Reading

Iron And Wine – Ghost On Ghost

By David Beech

April 22, 2013

Samuel Beam, otherwise known by his stage name Iron And Wine, has been making folk music in the vein of acts such as Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes for over a decade now. His extensive back catalogue contains a plethora of singles and split releases, live albums and extended plays and has featured on the soundtrack to countless films and TV programmes, from quirky indie flicks like The Garden State to angst-filled teen dramas like 90210 or The O.C. Now, eleven years after the release of his début full-length, comes studio album number five Ghost On Ghost. … Continue Reading

Complete Great Escape 2013 Line-Up Announced

By Danielle Gibson

April 22, 2013

As we are all gearing up for the festival season, here is The Great Escape’s complete line-up announcement. … Continue Reading

A Month Of Sundays

By Danielle Gibson

April 22, 2013

Noah And The Whale are set to combine their upcoming shows with one off screenings of Charlie Fink’s new short film, Heart Of Nowhere. The film will be screen on Sunday April 28 as part of A Month Of Sundays at London’s Palace Theatre in Cambridge Circus. … Continue Reading

Festival Coverage : HIPSVILLE – Wild Evel & The Trashbones

By Kenny McMurtrie

April 22, 2013

Garage Punk is alive & well and emanating from Vienna in the guise of the man known as Wild Evel, who would be a lesser figure without his stalwart Trashbones (who, it turns out, emanate from Graz).

In the run-up to Hipsville Murphy Morphine, fuzz-guitarist in the band, put that geographical faux pas aside and took time off from looking for empty crypts to perform in to answer a few questions we had the brassneck to put to the band:- … Continue Reading

Wolf People, Sebright Arms, London

 By Robert Freeman

April 19, 2013

Depending on the genre of music, the percentage of the audience that has attended a cider festival increases. Your standard pop concert for example, is fairly low. Beth Orton’s doing a tour? It’s perhaps a bit higher. Wolf People? It’s 100%. One hundred percent. One assumes psych-halflings, Wolf People spent their teenage years in their rooms listening to Zeppelin and Captain Beefheart, before emerging blinking into the sunlight three years ago and producing 2010’s most barn-storming album of prog. Steeple, Tidings and now new album, Fain all tap into a psych/folk musical tradition normally reserved for men of a more advanced age*, and their ninety minute set at the Sebright Arms contains all the prog greats of days gone by – dueling banjos, finger-tapping, a man with a band t-shirt, some stomp-pedal (though a lamentable absence of prog-flute – alas, there is rarely space for a prog-flautist on tour). … Continue Reading

Festival Coverage : HIPSVILLE – The Norvins

By Kenny McMurtrie

April 19, 2013

The Norvins are all set to bring their organ-drenched brand of garage punk to the first ever Hipsville weekender over 10 – 12 May. It’s practically impossible to express how much you need to experience this.

Pascal from the band came up trumps in responding to a bunch of questions we fired his way:- … Continue Reading

Record Store Day : A Perspective From The Soapbox

By Steven Dinnie

April 19, 2013
Record Store Day 2013 brings with it the usual re-releases, side-things, pointless nonsense, and new releases trying to trick their way to bigger sales by dropping on a day more when people are in record shops than usual. Everything has a stench of death about it this year, as if this is an end-of-season finale for all record shops after the spectacularly unexpected demise of HMV. … Continue Reading

The Weekly Froth!

By Stef Siepel

March 19, 2013

The Weekly Froth! A weekly take on six tracks, most of which have recently popped up somewhere in the blogosphere. Bit of a mixed bag with a slight leaning towards house, disco, and remixes, but generally just anything that for some reason tickled the writer’s fancy. … Continue Reading

Tyler, The Creator – Wolf

By Ryan Lake

April 18, 2013

Typically difficult, Tyler, The Creator made it clear that there would be no leaks of his latest release, forcing people to form their own opinions of the album upon release. After two years of waiting, Tyler is able to maintain the darkness and brash profanity that made both Goblin and Bastard intriguing, whilst improving the quality of his production as well as his list of featured artists (including here Erykah Badu).

… Continue Reading