Another day another facsimile of Arcade Fire. Booooooooooooooooring!!! But wait, don’t run so swiftly. Give said water features a chance. Despite the obvious comparison with Montreal’s favourite, the opening of ‘A Certain Feeling’ is a thrilling ride. …

Post Rock, where’s it going? I ask the question after listening to this album by The Ascent Of Everest because it’s a rerelease and remaster of a recording from 2006 and I can’t quite work out why they’ve bothered. Whilst it is an enormously accomplish …

Once upon a time, there was a band called My Bloody Valentine. They made very pretty music, performed it very loudly for their fans and then disappeared for sixteen years. Now they’re back to delight us all again. But the world has moved on; young pret …

‘With Our Arms Wide Open We March Towards The Burning Sea’… To be honest, with a title like that I don’t even need to listen to this album to know that it’s going to be my cup of tea. Portentous, melodramatic, gothic, all of the necessary ingredients …

Something has stirred in the northern wastelands. A thawing, a warming perhaps? Green shoots have poked their tender heads from beneath the snow. Whatever it is that has happened this, the sixth album from Sigur Ros, is different. Whilst still being ob …

This, Wolf Parade’s second album, inhabits the same realm as fellow Canadians Islands, but makes more of the sound, with more experimental keyboards and a few killer hooks. It could be argued that it is derivative of Arcade Fire but Wolf Parade were to …

It’s 4 am, it’s dark. I’m alone with the remnants of another embittered argument, and the taste of a turgid affair in my mouth. The air is littered with half truths and broken promises, and the come down is hitting me hard – ‘What’s the point? What’s h …

This morning I awoke with a heavy heart and a frown steadfastly refusing to turn itself upside down. My mind drifted back to what my mother told me about my birth – it was a slow, arduous affair, which lasted hours. When I finally popped out I kicked, …

Mark Kozelek is a stickler for time and place. Rarely do his songs not reference a particular month, a time of year, a house, a street, a town, a city. The very first line sung on his latest offering under the Sun Kil Moon moniker is no exception: “I c …

A challenge: listen to Errors’ debut album on your headphones, walking down the street without nodding your head. It’s impossible. I made my own music video in my head for God’s sake, as I walked – or more accurately, ‘strut-minced’ – my way along the …

Whatever you do, if you’ve never seen Kaki King play guitar, don’t read this yet. Stop reading. Stop right now. Open another tab or another window, go to You Tube and find her ‘Playing With Pink Noise’. Watch it. A live rendition is best. You’ll see wh …

Having parted company with record label 679 Records (a Warner imprint) in 2006, the Futureheads third album is a self-released effort and sees the band continue to mine their familiar post-punk seam with mixed results. As with their previous two effort …

In a list of most ironically named albums, the debut album from this Leicester four piece would certainly be worth considering. They have thrown a lot into the pot and produced a melange of styles that, for me, doesn’t represent a cogent release; it fe …

Free Kitten is the extra curricular musical outlet of one Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore) and Yoshimi (Boredoms). This, their fourth album, is the first material that they’ve released in over ten years…. You know that old thing …

Formed back in 2000 as ostensibly a one off collaboration between Okkervil River’s Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiberg, at that point of the band Kingfisher but later to join Okkervil, to showcase some songs that Sheff thought too downbeat for Okkervil Riv …

Well, this is a first. Never have I had to Google the name of a band’s new record, just to make sure I’ve been given the right CD. It’s not that some of the tracks on My Morning Jacket’s fifth album merely sound like a change of direction for the Louis …

I’m no authority on contemporary Americana or Alt Country, I have a passing acquaintance with Wilco and Grandaddy and the like but certainly no expert. However, what I do know when I hear it is good song writing, and this album is absolutely riddled wi …

Baltimore’s Beach House have been touring extensively of late with current E&D faves Fleet Foxes and there are certain similarities, dreamy harmonies and a whimsical ambiance, but there it ends. This record doesn’t have any of the X factor that has mad …

My Brightest Diamond is essentially the project of one Shara Worden – sometime Sufjan Stevens collaborator and ex-student of opera. Live, she has the ability to leave an audience gobsmacked, as was the reaction last year at Green Man, where she rendere …

Irregular Pearl – A term that describes this beguiling album by Fleet Foxes perfectly, and also the original meaning of the word baroque, a label regularly used by Fleet Foxes to describe their sound. The album mines a rich history of baroque pop which …