When a band starts to lose it they rarely get it back. With ‘Little Lucid Moments’, Motorpsycho have done just that. The Norwegian outfit’s twelfth album is their most compelling release since 2000’s ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ and a genuine return to form. Be …

Listening to The Epochs eponymously-titled debut is akin to waking-up still drunk from the night before. Although it starts breezily enough (with the stompy ‘Thunder and Lightning’), there’s a hangover approaching at a rate of knots. I want to like it …

As a precursor to their full length debut in June, Washington States’s Fleet Foxes have released this five track EP ‘Sun Giant’. Even after a number of listens how to describe Fleet Foxes remains a problem. They describe themselves as Baroque Pop, but …

The Texas heavy rockers are back. The much anticipated, well around the Echoes office it has been anyway, follow up to 2006’s ‘Age Of Winters’ kicks off relatively gently but the boys can’t help themselves and within 30 seconds or so the familiar crunc …

The Pyramids are Mark Cleveland and Sam Windett, two members of The Archie Bronson Outfit. They stumbled on the idea for this album whilst recording the brilliant ‘Derdang Derdang’. However, this is no weird side project devoid of any comparison to the …

Once upon a time, in an Indie disco far, far away, there was a band called James. They enjoyed a reasonable degree of degree of success through the early & mid-nineties but gradually followed that classic career parabola back into the obscurity from wh …

Another week, another drums and guitar duo. This week it’s Blood Red Shoes (BRS). Oh, and they’re a boy / girl team. White Stripes anyone? Unfortunately not! BRS could only dream of doing anything as interesting as Jack and Meg (who I don’t even think …

Chicago’s Speck Mountain are Karl Briedrick (guitar), Marie-Claire Balabanian (vocals, bass) and multi-instrumentalist Kate Walsh. Summer Above is their self-produced debut, which was originally released in the US in 2006 by Burnt Brown Sounds. ‘Summer …

What would it be like if you gave a group of unstable asylum patients a few instruments, and asked them to come up with 13 tunes? I reckon it would not sound dissimilar to Philadelphia’s Man Man. By ‘Rabbit Habits’ opening tracks’ lyrics “Been locked d …

The Black Keys have broadened the horizons of their output. But is that a good thing? Their fifth album is the culmination of a project with producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) of Gnarls Barkely and Gorillaz fame. Much of the music was purportedly to …