Review Corner

Category: Rock

  • ,

    The Kut: Grit

    To be critical of this is a bit like taking a Doc Marten to a kitten; it just seems wrong. The Kut is Princess Maha, a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and PhD (positive schizotypy related research), a double award winner in the UK Songwriting Contest, and awarded Arts Council funding to create the album. She’s not an…

  • ,

    Sons: Sweet Boy

    Sons hail from Melsele, Belgium, a country that also produced one of our favourite bands, heavy blues rockers Triggerfinger. Like Triggerfinger, Sons play high-energy music with a lot going on, except Sons are more at the punk / garage end of the sound spectrum. We suspect the marketing will be aimed at fans who like…

  • , ,

    Muse: Will of the People

    Muse are one of the world’s best live bands but their albums leave us a little unmoved; they all sound like Muse. Whatever the varying degrees of theatricality, campness or volume it’s still just Muse. Feel free to disagree. We know that sounds a bit like the Labour activist who complained to us when the…

  • , ,

    The Black Angels: Wilderness of Mirrors

    The Black Angels play psychedelic rock that’s somewhere between stoner and space rock, with a blend of sounds. Opener Without A Trace has the echoey smack of Led Zep’s When The Levee Breaks, guitars droning solidly, the surprisingly gentle vocals out the front (a little Stone Roses) and the drums gently Bohamesque. History of the…

  • , ,

    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.…

  • Biffy Clyro: The Myth Of The Happily Ever After

    Biffy are one of those bands who have a “sound” and are world class musicians, so we were expecting this to be “Yeah, it’s good, it’s just more Biffy, next” but they’ve managed to pull off the neat trick of producing what fans expect while sounding new and different. A neat trick if you can…

  • , ,

    Motörhead: The Löst Tapes

    We don’t know what’s worse: the fact that the members of the classic line-up of Lemmy, Philthy and Fast Eddy are all dead, or that Lemmy’s death killed Motörhead. But Motörhead recordings are far from dead and on Motörhead Day, 8th May, (say the eighth of May and Ace Of Spades quickly to see why)…

  • , ,

    The Mono LPs: Shuffle/Play

    This is a really good album ad we’d have said you should buy it even before we realised it referenced one of our favourite films, Being There. (A 1979 satire, based on a novel by Jerzy Kosinski and starring Peter Sellers as Chance the gardener, a simple man who knows only about gardening and the…

  • ,

    Jim White: Misfit’s Jubilee

    The Press release calls Mr White an “ever-elusive Americana maverick,” famous for his “dark ruminations on all things Southern”.This new album is varied, from White calling like a circus barker to a stadium-friendly song that wouldn’t sound out of place in a U2 set.The album opens with a fake tannoy train announcement but Monkey In…

  • ,

    Neil Young: Way Down In The Rust Bucket

    Young is now 75 and more likely bang out a well-meaning but average political album or release an archivally relevant but otherwise pedestrian live album, but this was recorded way back in 1990 at what sounds like a warm-up gig for the Ragged Glory tour, his 18th studio album. If you’re a Young fan and…