Category: Reviews

New Bands Panel | Eliza Shaddad – January March EP

Eliza Shaddad is a Scottish and Sudanese singer-songwriter with influences that range from childhood days spent at English folk festivals, the underground  hip-hop scene during her teens and to more recent postgraduate jazz studies at the Guildhall School of Music…

Album | Crybaby – Crybaby

Crybaby, real-name Danny Coughlan, seems very keen to be the new poster-boy for heartbroken storytelling. And with his self-titled debut, he may just achieve that status. This compact collection of poignant ballads will no doubt project Bristol-born Crybaby into the…

EP | The Son(s) – Leviathan

The Son(s) latest EP, Leviathan, is as atmospheric as they come. From beginning to end, it is quite apparent that this follow-up to their debut album was recorded in an old, empty flat during Edinburgh’s coldest winter in 50 years.…

Album | Father John Misty – Fear Fun

Joshua Tillman has left the milk-and-honey kindness of the Fleet Foxes to craft a more rebellious guise for himself as Father John Misty, a kind of lone cowboy in black. The sound will be familiar to Fleet Foxes fans, with…

Live | Simone Felice @ Pocklington Arts Centre

The last time I saw Simone Felice perform, he and his brothers were jumping around the stage at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds – singing about chickens and turning a humble washing board into an instrument. This time, at…

Album | Richard Hawley – Standing At The Sky’s Edge

Standing At The Sky’s Edge takes about a minute to annonce itself as a Richard Hawley album like no other you’ve ever heard before. In the 12 years since the former Longpig went solo he’s carved out a career making…

Album | Jeb Loy Nichols – The Jeb Loy Nichols Special

Jeb Loy Nichols’ name first registered in my head about a decade ago as the man behind the virtually indispensible Country Got Soul compilations, which collected the best of that special brand of music that combines deep grooves with Southern…

Album | Allo Darlin’ – Europe

If Belle & Sebastian are indeed, as they are often described, the “acceptable face of twee”, then bands like Allo Darlin’ are very much the unacceptable depth of the iceberg below the water – intimidating in their lightness, in their…

Album| Ty Segall & White Hair – Fence

Enfant terrible: the favoured term of writers who seek to envelope youths, of immense promise and questionable mental lucidity, in a cloud of castigation. Or, alternatively, just a stick used by bitter elders, to beat against the reputations of youngsters…