Author: jerobear
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Vomit: Punk Rock Past and Present
Vomit are something of a miracle. At best average when they formed in the heady days of punk — though they had lots of energy — they reformed a few years ago for a laugh and a couple of nostalgic gigs for their mates, and just never stopped. They gig all over the country and…
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Addie Brik: I Have A Doctor On Board
Brik remind us of Kate Bush, not just for the voice, which is not quite as squeaky but is Bushesque, but for the variety of the sounds she produces. And for the way her biography is casually littered with celebs. Just like Bush, who had a family friend who knew David Gilmour of Pink Floyd…
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Jack Carty + Gus Gardiner: Hospital Hill
Hospital Hill is Jack Carty and Gus Gardiner, whom we could claim to know all about, if we lied. Never heard of them. Carty won the 2010 acoustic singer-songwriter of the year award at the National Music Oz Awards, while Gardiner was with Australian rock band Papa vs Pretty. Despite being limited by us never…
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Neil Young: Roxy Tonight’s The Night Live
This is a live release whose backstory is perhaps as interesting as the actual album. It was originally released as a record store day package, so more of a treat than essential listening, good as it is. The 1973 gig, the inaugural show at the Roxy in LA, was the first public performance of the…
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Island: Feels Like Air
Island (they style it ISLAND) are a cool indie band with a young fanbase. You can tell the fans are young because we Googled some reviews and many of them made no sense, students thinking their thesaurus is more important than writing a coherent review. We love it. We discovered Island by mistake: we’d gone…
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Aidan O’Rourke: 365 Volume One
Top marks for O’Rourke for inventiveness; he wrote a tune a day for a year, hence the title. The inspiration was James Robertson’s book 365, itself remarkable: a collection of 365 short stories, each with 365 words. O’Rourke is recording all 365 — 22 down, 343 to go after this — but only releasing the…
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Panayiotis Demopoulos: Nina’s Clock
A Greek pianist playing improv jazz with a classical bent and a local connection? This doesn’t happen too often. This suite has 11 movements and is a reflection of moods, external stimuli and events as felt by the composer one night after recording sessions. He tells the story that links the tracks in the sleeve…
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Neil Young + Promise of the Real: Paradox
For parts of this movie soundtrack you think, “If Heineken did soundtracks…”; other parts are apparently men eating crisps in a field and playing guitar, so less so. Paradox is a film directed by Neil’s other half, Daryl Hannah. Its plot: Sometime in the future past, the “Man in the Black Hat” (Young), the “Particle…
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Prosecco Socialist: Songs from Behind Bars
The appeal of The Beautiful South passed us by somewhat, so it’s hard for us to tell how BS fans will view this rather charming new album from David Rotheray: love it, we expect. The gist of it is that he spent several decades playing/writing pop tunes that people loved, then sacked it off and…
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Basil Athanasiadis: Soft Light
This is mood music: if you’re in the right mood, it’s truly beautiful in places and leaves your mind relaxed and in the present. In the wrong mood, it scratches down your spinal cord like a horde of angry kittens with genetically engineered super-claws. In a word: it won’t calm you in moments of stress,…
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