My Grito presents … Mas Alto! A Charity Compilation

This is in a good cause and is a more-than-decent album. The cause: sadly not a local one but still good: the album is raising cash for No Us Without You, a US charity providing food security for undocumented back-of-house staff and their families. “Undocumented hospitality workers are the backbone of the hospitality industry,” says […]

Michael Bernard Fitzgerald: Love Valley

This is Fitzgerald’s fifth album but we’ve not heard of him before; he’s a Canadian singer-songwriter so he’s been honing his craft over there. It’s a nice little album, in the best senses of “nice” and “little”: it’s a cosy musical companion that will bring comfort to fans of Americana and folky roots in these […]

Royal Blood / Hello Cosmos / Retro Champ

Royal Blood: Trouble’s ComingIt’s not only trouble but a new album on it way from the noisy duo, who have an album out in spring. This new single is tight, crisp radio-friendly single with a bit beat, the guitar and kick drum working together to lay down a groove and a workmanlike chorus. The wild […]

Bearcraft: Fabrefactions

This is a peculiar album, in that we can’t make our minds up. At first we thought it started off strongly and tailed off to be rather forgettable, yet track nine turns out to be a proper earworm. It’s electronic pop with pretentions to grandeur that means it’s more than just electronic beeps with a […]

Narrow Head: 12th House Rock

This is a more than a decent album; while they’re not exactly not derivative, they’re also not dull and do sound themselves rather than anyone else. The sound is a grungy shoegaze, all pretty heavy, though they can do melody. There’s also an air of slacker about it. Part of the appeal is the live […]

Mulo Francel: Crossing Life Lines

As the artist, we’ve got to give Francel the benefit of the motivation behind this album (which is noble): the German saxophonist, clarinettist and composer was touring the Czech Republic and Poland, and met loads of nice people, leaving him wondering how he could personally deal with the suffering caused by his grandfathers’ generation? Did […]

Jack Henderson: Where’s The Revolution

If the injustices of the world leave you feeling helpless because there’s so much wrong and so little you can do, we can offer a small action you can take – buy Jack Henderson’s new album.Henderson sounds as if he’s a jobbing musician who does well – his biography says he’s played with the likes […]

John Nichol: Lancaster, The Forging of a Very British Legend

This is not a book to pick up and be enraptured by a beautiful machine; Nichol approaches the book as a journalist and tells the stories straight. Tales of horror and carnage are told in the same tone as tales of carnal lust (in the Lanc factories, where, to coin a phrase, never did so […]