Deaf Heat opens with the unflinchingly peculiar ‘Tongues’: darkly modulating harmonies bend two minutes into a bottomless eternity of human voices, cutting through hearts like ice. Lead track ‘Deep Green’ thunders in after the ethereal strangeness of ‘Tongues’, imagining the body as…
Listening to Broken Records Toska, the Edinburgh based bands first release in four years, it strikes me that there are two defined (though not necessarily mutually exclusive) routes available when putting together an EP. The first option is to release…
Former Low Anthem front-woman and ex-NASA researcher Jocie Adams has returned in typically unorthodox style with her first record in her shiny new group Arc Iris. While hearing Adams’ voice out front might take a little getting used to, little…
In Hard Rain Barb Jungr pays homage to some of the most violently political songs of a pair of legendary storytellers and songwriters. Mingling the angry, searingly clear-sighted songs of Bob Dylan with the indignant, rage-imbued writing of Leonard Cohen, Jungr brings…
The nights are getting longer, the sun is finally starting to appear after hiding behind a perpetual raincloud throughout the bleak winter months, and Spring is upon us, as is the latest record by The War on Drugs; a musical…
In Undress, adoptive Mancunian Jesca Hoop’s acoustic reworking of 2009 release Hunting my Dress strips five-year-old songs down to the bare, scintillating bones with magnificent results. Welcoming Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Willy Mason, Erika Wennerstrom (of Heartless Bastards) and Samuel Beam…
Sam Brookes toured with fellow acoustic artist Emily and the Woods last year, where he sampled a small pocketful of his new material. It was, however, the right amount, to enlighten the very few standing before him. What they saw,…
If you’ve ever been unsure of quite what ‘dream pop’ means, the debut self-titled album from Lapland should leave you in little doubt. With everything slightly hazy and off-kilter, echoey and wading-through-treacle slow, if you got to the end of…
‘How Are You Just a Dream’ flings the doors open on …And the Nothing setting a shouty, pissed-off tone that’s not what long-term fans of Hinson will be expecting. You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d put the wrong CD in…
A full five years on from Withered Hand’s unembellished debut Good News, on first listen to New Gods you’d be forgiven for thinking that Dan Willson has spent those years sunning himself on some far-flung beach mending whatever heartbreaks and…