18 months, in the world of music, really isn’t that long. One criticism that can immediately be levelled at the new Yellowcard record – their second in that space of time, following on from last year’s ‘When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes’ – is that …

Intro by Gareth O’Malley So, Euro 2012 concluded recently.  They say football is a funny old game, and in a way, the same can be said of music. From a personal standpoint, I have found music both easier and much harder to handle this year. There has be …

For The Cast of Cheers, the importance of this album cannot be understated. It’s the album on which they start really taking this whole ‘band’ thing seriously – they weren’t expecting the avalanche of word-of-mouth success that ‘Chariot’ brought them t …

In some respects, the new material from Meursault is clearly different to what’s gone before; in others, it’s an evolution of their previous work. Up til now, Meursault’s recorded output has essentially been a four-man band trading in sparse but brilli …

There’s always been a fairy-tale element to Duke Special’s music that transports the listener to different worlds. That’s something Belfast-based Peter Wilson’s alter ego has managed to pull off again in this first new “commercial” album since 2008 – t …

Maybe it’s the cold, the long dark winters, or the isolation that does it, but Scandinavia digs shoe-gazing. There have been some awesome exponents of the genre in recent years and they’ve clearly influenced this sophomore release by Gothenburg-based I …

Julian Corrie, aka Glasgow electronica wizard Miaoux Miaoux, has always been recognised for the post-rock influence present in his material, taken from the likes of fellow Weegies Mogwai, giving it a larger, more expansive sound.  For the most part, de …

Manchester’s instrumental jam(ish)-band three piece Dead Sea Apes have been making waves with their prog/desert rock stylings since their inception in 2009.  Released in conjunction with the excellent Astral House, Dead Sea Apes’ first full length sees …

For every recent post-punk band who have gone on to bigger and better things (e.g. Editors and Franz Ferdinand) with the release of their second album, there have been countless others who have made a mess of things (e.g. White Lies, who crashed and bu …

It was looking like a usual Friday night for me: a few beers, bit of writing and then a Twitter party which inevitably leads to a Bruce Springsteen session… and then this album dropped into my email inbox. Strange forces were at play (or simply the fac …

There are some who say that pop’s obsession with its past will seriously hamper its future. Indeed, the amount of revivalist acts who have been around in the previous few years is nothing short of staggering, especially so in the world of pop music. Ho …

Imagine, for a second, that you are standing at the top of the skyscraper that’s depicted on the new of the new A Place to Bury Strangers album, so high up that you can’t see the ground. Should you lose your balance and fall, you know it’s over, but it …

Airick Woodhead, the man behind Doldrums, is a video artist as well as a musician, and this EP has the feel of something that has been edited in the way a film might, with enough splicing and mashing to blunt a razorblade. The opening few seconds of ‘E …

It’s amazing what a bit of polish can do for a band. Up until now, Crocodiles have revelled in a lo-fi approach to making music, music that was once heavily indebted to the Jesus & Mary Chain but has managed to escape its influences. 2010’s ‘Sleep …

If, upon hearing this album, it proves difficult for you to get past the fact that Gaggle are a 21-member all-female choir, I won’t be too surprised. After all, some have marked that out as Gaggle’s ‘thing’. They’re far more than that, though: ‘From th …

It says a lot about a band’s longevity when it’s painfully obvious that their debut album gets better with age; in the 14 months that have elapsed since The Chapman Family released their explosive first outing, ‘Burn Your Town’, their stock has risen c …

Making a record for the first time in eight years is always a difficult task. In the case of Hot Water Music, the question ‘would they ever make a record together again?’ was never really on the cards, at least in hindsight. It was always a question of …

Since the release of Paloma Faith’s 2009 debut, the whole female retro-soul thing has gone a bit mental thanks to Adele shifting 40 zillion albums or something. Comparisons are therefore unavoidable, and fans of the genre will be singing along to the a …

This album is like a soundtrack to the summer with all the elements you would want for music at a summer party: from great bass beats to beautiful lyrics. An eclectic mix of songs, you get a Motown feel to them all, especially with the textured vocal t …

They’re the Brooklyn surf-poppers who are riding the crest of a wave, and are set to have their profile rise even higher when their debut EP arrives in a month. They are Fast Years, and what’s more, aside from their music being a breath of fresh air, t …

Ever have one of those moments where you feel a string of songs on a certain album is so good that you don’t think you’ll ever be able to get past them and on to the rest of the record? I must confess that this has been happening to me quite regularly …