Muso’s Guide’s Favourite 50 of 2011: 50-21

Last week we unveiled our top 50 albums of the year, but as regular Muso’s readers will know, we get just as excitable about the good old song as we do about full length albums. So with that in mind, over the next three days we’re going to be unveiling which songs our writers have voted their top picks of the year. Enormous thanks are due to Mitchell Sterling who did us proud in fulfilling his annual chore sifted through the emails from the Muso’s Guide staff, compiling them into something resembling a logical order. … Continue Reading

Albums Of 2011: 50-41

Wye Oak

Welcome to the first part of our albums of the year countdown – for the rest of the week, we’ll be bringing you our favourite albums of 2011, as voted for by our writers. Check each day this week for 10 more albums, with 10-1 announced on Friday. We’ll bring you our favourite songs of the year in the following week. All in all, 24 lists were totted up by Mitchell Stirling, and votes were cast by Tom Bolton, Paul Brown, Sam Cleeve, Jane Corcoran, Lucy Dearlove, Rosie Duffield, Ben Dufton, Paul Faller, Stephen Ferdinando, Paul Gettings, Alex Kavanagh, Dannii Leivers, Steve McGillivray, Kenny McMurtrie, Jim Merrett, Greg Salter, Natalie Shaw, Andrew Schagen, Harley Sherman, Stef Siepel, Mitchell Stirling, Stephanie Stevens-Wade, Antonio Tzikas, and Russell Warfield. This list, and everything else that we do, would not have been possible without them and all our other writers – thank you! … Continue Reading

Singles of the Week: 15th August 2011

by Paul Brown

Given the events of the past week, it’d be easy to be a bit flippant and infuse this weeks singles column with some kind of glib riot theme, make some rubbish Kaiser Chiefs joke, or even drop in some shit crack about Gazza and a fishing rod (we’ve all got one of those wankers in our Facebook feeds, right?) However, that’d be pretty disrespectful to those who lost businesses, homes, hope, and in the case of one horrible incident, lives, so it’s probably best we just focus our attentions on the power of music to unite us, to lift us, and infuriate us. After all, few things offer a better escape than a good single. Onwards, then. … Continue Reading

In Depth: T in the Park

T In The Park, Balado Airfield

T in the Park

We bring you the round up from our next stop in an 11-festival calendar with Vodafone VIP – Scotland’s pride, T in the Park festival.

For those who presume that a festival containing 70,000 ‘revellers’ (as the local papers will have you picture it) in a giant muddy field can’t possibly have the excitement of their favourite band headlining a venue in their town, T in the Park is a strong challenger. … Continue Reading

Video: Arctic Monkeys – The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala

Here’s the new video for ‘The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala’, the second single from Arctic Monkey‘s fourth album, Suck It And See.  The band are headlining T In The Park and Oxegen this weekend, and we’ve got the rest of their tourdates below. … Continue Reading

Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See

It’s difficult to write objective journalism on the Arctic Monkeys - very few people are ‘indifferent’ to them. If you’re someone like me, the Monkeys were a pretty dominant force in your teenage years, providing the soundtrack for many evenings of underage drinking and youthful angst about not getting laid and not getting pissed. Others seem to dislike them precisely because of those years when their heels were on the neck of the mainstream, drowning out any other bands from the radio. … Continue Reading

Mercury Prize 2010 – Our Predictions

The xx - xx

As Paul The Octopus isn’t returning our calls we’ll have to make do with our own physic cephalopod, Mitchell Stirling as he casts his tentacles over the elite 12 British and N. Irish records that might be receiving nods next week.

Last year I, like most people felt that Doves winning would be to similar to the Elbow win the previous year but didn’t think that would prevent them getting a nod (nor did the bookies, they were favourites). Similarly we all thought that Portishead’s Third was a lock the year before and it didn’t make it. This year we can’t even find odds before the nominations but you can pick up a vibe on a few releases. … Continue Reading

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I probably am, maybe…..

Arctic Monkeys

I’m not really too bothered about who he’s fucking, or where he lives, or even what he gets up to outside music. He can become an actor if he wants, start painting….. whatever. I’m concerned about Alex Turner, ‘the indie icon’, about this ‘genius’ tag that has prematurely been bestowed upon his slender frame. … Continue Reading

2006: Gnarls Barkley, Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

While it was only a few short years ago, 2006 was a real game changer in terms of this decade. The previous year saw the implementation of digital sales into the singles chart and by summer this year Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ became the first UK number one not to sell a single physical copy. It was the also the year that YouTube went supernova and allowed many of us to check out classic clips of bands performing on Top of The Pops while we mourned the final weekly episodes. While the great rush to add people to your fledging MySpace account may have been slightly earlier, there are two acts that will forever be associated with it; Lily Allen and The Arctic Monkeys. … Continue Reading