Review Corner

Category: Indie

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    The Slow Show: White Water

    An excellent, if slightly left-field album, The Slow Show present a mix of the atmospheric and arty, as if David Bowie was the Big Black Goth and not the Thin White Duke. Dresden, a former single, opens with a male voice choir sound-alike before piano and spoken word. It sounds in places like something from…

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    Dutch Uncles: O Shudder

    And wasn’t this one welcome in the Review Corner? We loved their second album Cadenza back in 2011 and even went to see them tour, but follow up third album Out of Touch, In the Wild was just dull. We were sad. Now they’re back with a fourth (the debut self-titled album came out on…

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    Ratworld: Menace Beach

    Someone, somewhere must have said something wise about music constantly reinventing itself and this is the latest incarnation of shoegazy, scuzzy, distorted guitar pop. Teenagers who are new to all this will find this to be exciting and moshpit friendly music; older musos who’ve heard it all before will find Menace Beach entertainingly enthusiastic and…

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    Glass Caves: Alive

    We reviewed this a couple of weeks ago, using a faulty CD that skipped a couple of tracks. Now equipped with a fully working download, we’re going to plug them again, as they’re very good. Think Arctic Monkeys with a slick polish and sparkle (which you could read as “Arctic Monkeys having lost their edge”…

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    Black Swan Lane: A Moment of Happiness

    Black Swan Lane play melodic and fairly gentle tunes given a goth air thanks to the husky vocals of Jack Sobel (who along with John Kolbeck is the only original member, former Chameleon Mark Burgess having left). They’ve not changed their sound over the three albums we have in the Review Corner vaults (there’s three…

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    She Keeps Bees: Eight Houses

    She Keeps Bees play rootsy, stripped down music that’s somewhere between indie and blues. The songs are mostly led by Jessica Larrabee’s soulful voice; they’re from Brooklyn but there’s a swampy aroma of Louisiana about this. Apparently the duo’s previous albums had a loud/quiet thing going on, and while this is lacking here they still…

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    Allo Darlin’: We Come From The Same Place

    We were most delighted to get this, as we thought Allo Darlin’ had split up. Their debut, 2010’s Allo Darlin’ is one of our favourite indie pop albums of recent years (and it’s proper indie pop, not manufactured guitar music). The follow up Europe was a bit slicker and not as immediately likeable; we play…