From the first drum beat Single Flame creates an intense ambience reminiscent of an emerging Florence + the Machine, using her voice as the primary instrument Lucy Ward entrances the listener with epic and satirical lyrics. The power behind ‘I…
The Dodos have always been a band of the brain more than the heart, easier to admire than to love. They produce songs that are meticulously crafted with not a beat or a thought out of place. But there’s a…
The ninth studio album by the Oregon veteran marks a return to more conventional material after 2011’s Tumble Bee: Laura Veirs Sings Folk Songs for Children. If that project seemed a surprising departure for “Two Beers Veirs”, this rock-tinged set…
Icecapades, the debut album from The Lunchtime Sardine Club, pseudonym of Brighton musician Oliver Newton, comprises an intriguing array of songs and moods. The album was home-recorded over a year and a half, and right from the first, Newton reveals…
After debut album Magpie Tess Jones returns with a new band of musicians, The Circle, in tow. Together they create a bigger, heavier rock sound that still has one eye on folk music. From the opening seconds of first track…
Break-ups are hard. Emotions are raw. Sometimes it takes a little while for the smoke to clear enough to see what, if anything, is still left standing. And The Civil Wars, in case you didn’t already know, is very much…
What does it take to redirect the trends of culture? Is it money, or is it love? Was mankind tuned into disco, to apocalyptic movies? Or were they tuned into us? These are big questions. These are big, pretentious questions…
As soon as the first line has been sung on Daniel Pattison’s debut EP The Southern Cross you’ll be aware that Pattison’s is one of the most noteworthy male voices of the last twenty years. It’s a gorgeous voice –…
Landshapes (formerly Lulu and the Lampshades) are a foursome most well-known for playing on cups in their kitchen. They are raucously fun to see live, playing a dizzying array of instruments (especially percussive ones), and Rambutan is rhythmically and musically…
Whilst writing The Violence, last year’s dazzling musical chronicle of the Essex witch-hunts, Darren Hayman researched and adapted a repertoire of folk songs from the civil war period. On Bugbears he has kitted them out and sent them to march,…