The Vaccines – Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) ‘Wreckin Bar (Ra Ra Ra)’ by The Vaccines is one minute and twenty- four seconds of infectious guitar music, with touches of retro, surf, the 70s, lo- fi and something new. Justin…
Category: Reviews
Live: Dirty Projectors @ Koko, 07/12/2010
Listening to the Dirty Projectors is a bit like being inside an oddly syncopated clockwork toy; so much so that as I refresh my memory of this gig, my sister asks why I have two songs playing at once (it’s…
Live: Yann Tiersen @ Exeter Phoenix Theatre, 10/11/2010
Yann Tiersen and his band don’t like to make a huge entrance. They shuffle onstage in checked shirts, jeans and Converse, each not quite waving, but motioning, to the audience: completely unaffected by the roaring applause they elicit. Their casualness…
Live: Ruarri Joseph @ Exeter Phoenix 25/11/10
After a somewhat turbulent 2009 that saw Ruarri Joseph side tracked by family life for almost a year, it’s clear from the moment the Cornish singer-songwriter steps on stage at the Exeter Phoenix with his new band that’s he’s happy…
Album: Bruce Springsteen – The Promise
Here’s a thing, The Promise is an album full of songs that didn’t make it on to Springsteen’s classic album ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’. That fact isn’t something that might get someone excited about a music release, you might imagine…
Live: Stornoway @ The Junction, Cambridge
Previous experience has taught me that the addition of anything resembling a string section to a live show can only ever be a very good thing. In fact, just a single violin can do the trick, and luckily for me,…
Live: Polly & The Billets Doux @ The Living Room, Cambridge
The Living Room is a brilliant little evening of music that occurs (usually) on the first Friday of each month in the basement of a bistro in the less glamorous end of Cambridge town. It’s probably the city’s best-kept musical…
Album: Regina Spektor – Live In London
Throughout Regina Spektor Live In London you can hear one girl squealing madly at the start of every song. Like the audience do at the Xfactor, when they realise Olly Murs is about to murder Killing Me Softly or somesuch.…
Album: Eels – Tomorrow Morning
Being a devoted Eels fan can be pretty hard on the heart. The bitter, lonesome, near-despairing End Times was the eighth album in Mark Oliver Everett’s discography, and bore witness to the tearing of sinew and bone that comes at…
Live: The Mariner’s Children & Tristram @ The Cellar, Oxford
“Hi there, big empty room,” announces Benedict Rubenstein, lead singer and guitarist (and banjo and mandolin player) of The Mariner’s Children, as the seven-strong group carefully position themselves on The Cellar’s relatively small stage. Indeed, the previous three bands of…