Wire – Red Barked Tree / Gang of Four – Content
Wire and Gang of Four wrote the book for post-punk, kind of. Are they still innovators or merely curators with Red Barked Tree and Content?
Bad Lieutenant – London – 18 March 2010
As a teenage music fan, one of my prized possessions was a bootleg LP of Joy Division recorded on the same stage Bad Lieutenant are playing tonight, 30 years later. You think Bernard Sumner, guitarist in both bands, would mention the significance, or perhaps the memory has left him, like his own introduction to an Electronic song later in the set "This is called "Tighten Up", I've no fucking clue what it's about".
Blue Roses – Blue Roses
Blue Roses may not exist in nature but there's nothing artificial about Yorkshire songsmith Laura Groves.
Stars – The Five Ghosts
Critic proof Canadian indie-poppers release their fifth disc of tunes but like its subject matter we find it lacks substance.
Robert Lurie – No Certainty Attached – Steve Kilbey and The Church
Slighty less than groundbreaking, but no less worthy, biography of Australian poet, musician and icon, Steve Kilbey of The Church.
The Monochrome Set – The Independent Singles Collection
Cherry Red, 2008 [7/10] England 1979 -- punk was morphing into the more experimental post-punk and saw landmark releases from PiL, Gang of Four, The Cure, Joy Division and The Pop Group. And then...then there
Julian Plenti – Julian Plenti is… Skyscraper
Paul Banks discovers that the best path to seduction lies in reduction on his first solo outing as the mysterious Julian Plenti.
The Morning Benders – Big Echo
Oh, summery shimmery albums. Why must you hook us so? Berkeley, CA's, The Morning Benders serve up a treat.
Howler – This One’s Different
From the label that gave you The Libertines and The Strokes, here's another young and disaffected indie guitar band.
Grand Atlantic / The Lovers of Modern Art / We All Want To – Brisbane – 26 June 2009
Not ones to throw angular shapes the boys here strive to find the right notes and the majority of the time they hit them.
Fucked Up – David Comes To Life
Concept albums, rock operas, the artistic chasm of failure widens as Fucked Up take the challenge and make the album of their career.
Anni Rossi – Rockwell
How does Anni Rossi rock? Does she rock well? Well, no, not so much actually.
The Dears – Murry Lightburn Interview (Static, 2009)
Murray from The Dears lays it all out - "I didn’t sign up for any of this shit. I just write songs and try to work with people to facilitate those songs and get them out to people to hear them."
El Perro del Mar – Love Is Not Pop
While we love pop, Sweden's El Perro Del Mar remind us that pop is not love.
Cold Cave – London – April 4 & 5 2011
In a long black leather jacket and hoodie and stacked heels, Cold Cave's Wes Eisold looks like any other kid you see in Camden on a Friday night, except that he's not and it isn't and before he even opens his mouth, you're thinking "wow, that leather jacket really is the shit" and it is. It's also a special day for 80's synth-obsessives Cold Cave, as Eisold curtly informs the assembled at Rough Trade Records - "Welcome to our album birthing day". Their second album, the strangely positive sounding Cherish The Light Years showing a marked change from the same Cold Cave that played London back in May 2010.
Miss Li – Best Of 061122-071122
National, 2007 [rating:7/10] The twelve month period denoted by the title of this compilation (that's how the logical Swedes write the date) was an ultra productive period for Stockholm's Linda Carlsson otherwise known as Miss