Ralfe Band’s Son be Wise is a contradictory thing. A brooding, occult record driven through with pop hooks and fantastical shimmers. It’s somehow irresistibly danceable and irrepressibly dark. It’s one of those records that’s totally engrossing until it’s finished, when…
Category: Reviews
Album | Houndmouth – From The Hills Below The City
Folk? Well, no, not really. But folksy and bluesy and rootsy and thoroughly good fun. From The Hills Below The City is the debut album by Houndmouth, a band from New Albany, Indiana, just across the river from Louisville, Kentucky,…
New Bands Panel | Minko – Songs 1-4 (Sybil Of Delphi) EP
Minko is an ethereal singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist currently living in Cornwall, England, who has been known to veer between techno and folk, seeing no divide between the two. On this EP, Minko embraces the latter- but what does the New…
Album | Georgia Ruth – Week of Pines
Georgia Ruth has had a busy few months, working with Guillemots on new material as well as appearing with Pen Pastwn, the new band from Richard James of Gorky’s Zygotic Monkey. Now she’s releasing her own solo album, Week Of…
Live | Howie Payne, Paul Thomas Saunders & Ellen Smith @ Munro House, Leeds
Ellen was the first one to say what we’d all been thinking: it felt like an indoor festival. As the last of a beautiful day’s sunshine poured in through the open windows on the top floor of Leeds’ Munro House…
Album | Field Report – Field Report
Christopher Porterfield might be a name familiar to those who have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bon Iver timeline – he used to be in a band with Justin Vernon, DeYarmond Edison, before going their separate ways. Whilst Vernon found…
EP | Sarah Hayes – Mainspring
When Louis Abbott was explaining how Admiral Fallow’s second album had come to have on it so many new sounds, he told us it was because his bandmates continued to surprise him with their array of abilities. And just in…
Album | Laura Marling – Once I Was An Eagle
Laura Marling is back with her fourth album, which could so easily have been a couple of records. Its 16 tracks fitting neatly into two camps. Following on seamlessly from A Creature I Don’t Know, Once I Was An Eagle…
Album | Sparrow and the Workshop – Murderopolis
With past albums from Sparrow and the Workshop in mind, 2010’s Crystal Falls and particularly 2011’s Spitting Daggers, it wouldn’t be off-key to expect another thematically dark album from the Glasgow-based trio. One also may not be surprised to learn…
Album | Hero & Leander – Tumble
How is it possible not to like a band capable of producing a song so lovely as ‘Kiss Me By The Water Cooler’? How is it possible to have anything but good will towards a band who seem to be…