Category: Pop rock

  • Major Lazer: Peace Is The Mission

    Summer is here, well nearly, and Major Lazer (aka Diplo plus chums) is also here, offering a soundtrack for all your BBQs or parties. Previous Major Lazer CDs have not so much been albums as compilations of dance tracks and this no different. Opener Be Together is a slower song but after this measured opening…

  • Blur: The Magic Whip

    We’re with Scroobius Pip and Dan Le Sac on “Thou Shalt Always Kill” – Blur, just a band. We don’t worship the ground they walk on and in fact play Graham Coxon’s solo stuff more. We were slightly baffled by the restrictions attached to the streamed copy of this — we couldn’t even tell people…

  • Ash Hunter: Rural Music

    This came via Wedge at A&A Music so we weren’t expecting much: in fact it’s wonderful. Overall the vibe reminded us of Traffic’s mix of folk and jazz, from an era when people used to be optimistic about putting the world to rights with a few good ideas and a steady supply of weed. It…

  • The Wombats: Glitterbug

    Time travel does exist: The Wombats are in fact a cheesy 70s disco band stranded in this century. Shortly after an appearance on Top Of The Pops in 1975, they took a wrong turn and ended up in Dr Who’s Tardis, then found themselves stuck in 2007. Still dressed in Wombat suits and with Peter…

  • Eska: Eska

    Eska is a session singer and apparently this album has taken five years, presumably working on and off. If you Google her, you find things like “the most talked about, revered singer you’ve never heard of”. It’s an album to immerse yourself in, and one that doesn’t really lend itself to a 200-word review. It…

  • The Best Of The Grateful Dead

    With the Dead announcing that they’re calling it a day — three shows at Chicago’s Soldier Field from 3-5th July will be their last — it’s a good time to issue a best of. It’s probably not the first, but it’s a good ending to their career. We’re not massive Deadheads, but they are embedded…

  • John McCullagh: New Born Cry

    We’d expect the popular Press to pretty well go bonkers over this, and for it to figure in “best of” lists at the end of the year. His debut in 2013 was the first on Alan McGee’s 359 Music label, so he’s cool, he sounds Beatlesesque and his full name is John Lennon McCullagh, and…

  • Mounties: Thrash Rock Legacy

    Two albums of the year are reviewed this week — this one will be one of ours, John McClaughlin will, we suspect, be other people’s. We were expecting little of this, so were very impressed. Mounties are made up of Hawksley Workman and Steve Bays, whose previous band Hot Hot Heat got a bit famous…

  • Gallows: Desolation Sounds

    We never liked Gallows much. They were a punk band that decided to be the most punk band ever, like Steve Irwin deciding being the Ozziest Australian. The music Press loved front man Frank Carter but now he’s gone, leaving to form an ill-fated venture that was “destined to change music” but disappeared without trace.…

  • Emerson Lake and Palmer Emerson: Trilogy

    There was a conversation about punk on the Review Corner Facebook page this week and we were praising the DIY ethos of that movement, where people who were frankly not very good could still make music. ELP and Yes were the very bands punk set out to destroy, with their self-indulgent three-day long keyboard solos…