Birds of Chicago’s self-titled release evokes the feeling of stopping by your neighborhood watering hole and hearing a friend’s show. Light-hearted, warm, and welcoming. JT Nero and Allison Russell, whose collaboration is at the center of the band, seem to…
Category: Records
Album | Wooden Wand – Blood Oaths of the New Blues
Wooden Wand is certainly an intriguing artist. James Jackson Toth manages to combine Americana, folk and elements of prog rock seamlessly to create mesmerising, insightful music. This latest release, Blood Oaths of the New Blues, carries on in this same…
Album | Christopher Owens – Lysandre
“If your heart is broken, you will find fellowship with me.” Lysandre, the debut solo album from former Girls frontman Christopher Owens, is presented variously as a relationship album, a concept album and a document of his experiences in his…
Album | Foxygen – We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
One of the bands hotly tipped to make 2013 a year to remember are Californian duo Foxygen. Their debut EP Take the Kids off Broadway featured prominently on many an end of year lists, and the anticipation for their first…
Album | Alasdair Roberts & Friends – A Wonder Working Stone
A Wonder Working Stone is, depending on how you count it, the eighth album by Alasdair Roberts, the rake-like Scottish folk bard-bellower with the cello-bow voice. It’s not, by any means, an easy voice. But it is a rich one,…
Album | Villagers – {Awayland}
If 2012 was a ‘meh’ year of some good British records and nice debuts by a handful of promising artists, 2013 will be forced to do better, not only because there’s no massive international event to distract us (yes Olympics,…
EP | Apples & Eve – Dionysus
When you see that a band is formed of musicians who have worked with the likes of Beirut, Laura Marling, and Peggy Sue, you expect them to be pretty good. But you still won’t expect to hear the remarkable sound…
Album | Gaze Is Ghost – Plume
There’s something alternately smoky and ethereal in this debut album by Gaze Is Ghost, who so far has such an appropriately elusive online presence that all I know about her is that she’s a Paris-based singer-songwriter with a changing pen…
EP | Malpas – Where The River Runs
Out in Leeds the other night, I came across a unusual beer that was essentially like drinking bacon. A pint of ‘Smoked Porker’, a rather unique and very, very dark ale, took a little getting used to. The barman who…
Album | Cellophane Flowers – Staring at the World
The wonderfully quirky London-based quartet that are Cellophane Flowers have finally unveiled their debut album and what an album it is. From their previous releases, we had an idea of what we could expect from Staring at the World: driving,…