Category: Pop rock
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The Kooks: 10 Tracks to Echo in the Dark
The title is the most interesting thing about this largely forgettable new album from The Kooks. It’s surprising that they’re still going; most of the bands of their ilk (landfill indie being that ilk, the term coming from the fact that people joked that most albums would end up as landfill) having disappeared, so well…
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Mean Mary: Portrait of a Woman (Part I)
This album is so good we forgot to review it; we played it and played and got to know it so well we thought we’d written about, but we never did. It is, as one might expect, really good. Mary James is basically a country singer, leading on her banjo, but if you can tolerate…
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Wylderness: Big Plans For A Blue World
This is a nice little album for fans of dreamy indie rock and shoegaze (mostly without the volume), with elements of folk. You could turn to Swedish post-rock band Logh (pronounced Log) as a soundalike, or then again Martin John Henry, the Scottish fella who was in De Rosa but whose The Other Half Of…
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Kramies: Kramies
If anyone tells you there’s no good music any more, point them towards this delightful and all-too-short album from Ohio songwriter Kramies (pronounced Kraim-iss). The album opens with the gloomily majestic Days Of, which has (in the words of the Press release) a nostalgic warmth, particularly in the chorus, which would warm the heart of…
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Shakespears Sister: Hormonally Yours
Shakespears Sister passed us by back in the day, so we listened to this with fresh ears, and it is – as one might expect if they’re bothering to re-release it 30 years on – a strong album. It doesn’t sound too dated; a cool indie pop band could put something like this out today,…
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Death Cab for Cutie: Asphalt Meadows
We’ve been fans of Death Cab for years – and they’re one of the loudest bands you’ll see live, despite the gentle songs – and at first play-through of this new one were a bit meh. Death Cab have a sound, they’ve gradually got poppier, and this is largely a pop album of easy-on-the-ear music.…
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Rob Heron and The Tea Pad Orchestra: The Party’s Over
Rob Heron and The Tea Pad Orchestra’s fifth album is a homely offering. It’s not a classic release but it might encourage you to see them live. The sound is cliched country and western, familiar to fans of Bob’s Country Bunker where the Blues Brothers were forced to play Stand By Your Man and Rawhide…
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We Are Scientists: Huffy
We’re ashamed to admit we’ve underestimated We Are Scientists. We liked some tracks but never really got them; possibly because 2006’s debut With Love and Squalor came out at a time when there were lots of good guitar bands, notably Arctic Monkeys (and My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade) and Razorlight, as well as decent…
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Benjamin Lazar Davis: Benjamin Lazar Davis
This is one of those perfect indie albums that you can listen to over and over and is a taste of summery sun in the depths of winter; indie in the modern sense of accomplished synth-based pop as a side-project, slick and well played, not the old indie of a DIY band bashing out a…
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