Category: Reviews

Album | The Felice Brothers – Life in the Dark

The fertile Hudson River Valley in upstate New York is home to Woodstock, the Saugerties, and Columbia County where The Felice Brothers recorded Life In The Dark on their family farm. Using a do-it-yourself ethic they created a studio in…

Live | Laura Marling @ Meltdown Festival, London

In some ways, it’s hard to come up with superlatives to describe Laura Marling. She’s clearly a virtuosa… adept at playing the guitar, with an agile and capable voice that she controls well. Her lyrics are intelligent and versatile, flicking…

Live | Ben Folds @ Millennium Centre, Cardiff

yMusic line up guard-of-honour style, awaiting the arrival of the man everyone is here to see. The classical chamber music sextet are the latest addition to the menagerie of Ben Folds’ collaborators. This Folds chap doesn’t like to play it…

Album | Eli “Paperboy” Reed – My Way Home

It’s a rare musician these days that travels from Boston to the Delta and finds himself entranced by the jukebox joints of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Even rarer to then travel up to Chicago and become music minister at the south side…

Album | Case/Lang/Veirs – case/lang/veirs

A combination of ‘60s girl group tropes, sweet melodies, and gorgeous lyrics about the female condition fuel this triumphant self-titled debut from the collaboration of Neko Case, k.d. lang, and Laura Veirs. Tunes are sighed out, telling tales of seduction,…

Album | Ala.ni – You and I

Do you like being seduced? Of course you do. Well despite having an extraneously punctuated name that recalls some of the most repellent characters in Nathan Barley (Jonatton Yeah? – yeah?), the Ala.ni of You & I is seduction personified.…

Album | Augustines – This Is Your Life

It’s often said that a lot of American musicians are true Anglophiles, such as Las Vegas’ Brandon Flowers, who fell in love with the 80’s sounds of the Pet Shop Boys and the Smiths, and Billy McCarthy can be added…

Album | Cat’s Eyes – Treasure House

Cat’s Eyes second long player commences like a fairy-tale. It feels modern and old as Faris Badwan and Rachel Zaffira (a real life couple) share vocal duties over songs that hark back to classic sixties pop among other styles. Treasure…

Album | Darren Hayman – Thankful Villages, Vol. 1

How fitting to get acquainted with Darren Hayman’s new multimedia documentary project and album ‘Thankful Villages Volume 1’ on a day set aside in the USA as a memorial to soldiers.The project’s central theme of a musical, visual and narrative…