Sleeper – Smart / The It Girl
Putting on our Britpop goggles yet again, Sleeper's debut album Smart and its follow-up The It Girl get the reissue treatment.
Suzanne Vega – Close Up Vol. 1 Love Songs
A thematic collection of stripped down tracks from Suzanne Vega's songbook, beginning with the love song.
Kaki King – Mexican Teenagers EP
Diminutive guitar goddess Kaki King gets caught up with the wrong crowd on Mexican Teenagers.
The Darling Buds – London – 22 September 2010
You’d be forgiven for having a sense of déjà vu here. Is it 1989? Did The Primitives and The Darling Buds really both play London within a week of each other? Having been absent from the live scene for most of the '90s and all of the past decade, for both bands to surface at the same time is unthinkable. Unthinkable, but pretty damn cool. It brings back memories of a time when the music magazines invented a scene called ‘Blonde’, where bands were lumped together purely based on the colour of the lead singers hair. Which by their way of thinking meant you were either a Blonde, a Goth or in Fairground Attraction.
Camera Obscura – Interview with Carey Lander (Static, 2010)
With their fourth album My Maudlin Career Glasgow's Camera Obscura shifted further away from their indie pop origins to create their own take on Bacharachian orchestral pop and '60s soul contrasted against sparse country melancholy. Keyboardist and backing vocalist Carey Lander talks about joining the band, meeting Lloyd Cole, the orchestral and country elements in their sound and how they came to cover the Boss.
The Charlatans – Who We Touch
Touched by the somewhat friendly eclectic hand of The Charlatans for their tenth album in twenty years.