Santogold – Santogold
Downtown/Inertia, 2008[rating:7/10] "The rules are...there are no rules" intoned one time (Transvision) vamp Wendy James and is a maxim which Santi White, better known as Santogold, takes to heart. Older and wiser than most of
Peter Murphy – Should The World Fail To Fall Apart
Cherry Red, 2011 [5/10] While the other three members forged on with nary a breath to contemplate what lay behind them, it took the ex-Bauhaus frontman 3 long years to record his first solo album.
Dark Mean – Dark Mean
Canadian folk-sters Dark Mean deliver a "must-listen album with staying power, and one of the year’s best" on their self-released debut.
Dean Wareham – Black Postcards
Penguin Press, 2008 [rating:7/10] "I don't wanna stay at your party/I don't want talk to your friends/I don't wanna vote for your president/I just wanna be your tugboat captain." Over simple chords, and a shaky
Kaki King – Junior
More depressing pop dressed up espionage style on the fifth album from this diminutive guitar goddess. "Junior", indeed.
Pixies – Brisbane – 31 July 2010
A few nights before this Pixies warm up concert for Splendour in the Grass, I had a vivid dream. In it I was the tour manager or press officer for the band and they were being put up in a luxury hotel with a huge swimming pool which they were swanning around in and (in)famously not getting along and refusing to do the show. It ended with me giving them a “look all the great rock’n’roll bands are dysfunctional, but when you’re on stage for that hour and a half you come together, that's when you work, that's when you function!” speech. And then I drove them to the Zoo in a black hummer.