Category: Rock
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Rews: Pyro
The list of two-person groups is getting longer by the day, from White Stripes to Black Keys and onto Royal Blood. Rews add two novelties to the mix: they’re female and they don’t just play rock. Opener Let It Roll opens with solid drums and a heavy riff, though the verse and chorus are more melodic;…
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The Americans: I’ll Be Yours
This is an odd album; classic rootsy American rock played by excellent musicians that doesn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts. The Americans are from Los Angeles and worked with Jack White and T Bone Burnett on the documentary American Epic, the soundtrack for which we reviewed. They’ve also played backing for…
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The Eagles: Hotel California
This is going to make some people feel old: it is 40 years since this album came out, celebrated with this two-CD package (the bonus CD is a live album). It’s clearly a classic, particularly for the title track, but it’s not quite as close to perfection as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which is well-nigh flawless.…
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Son of Dave: Music for Cop Shows
We’ve heard of Son of Dave — he’s being going for 20 years — but heard nothing by him until now. Or at least no solo work; he was in Crash Test Dummies for a spell. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm. He plays beat-box and harmonica-driven blues, and the sound and DIY ethos are reminiscent of…
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Kim Churchill: Weight_Falls
We listen to a lot of music. A fair bit gets played again, some goes on the Review Corner iPod and a select few are placed in the genre “genius”, the albums we really like and play over. Kim Churchill’s breakout Silence/Win is in there, because it’s a really nice album that we like listening…
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Judah and the Lion: Folk Hop N’ Roll
Take Mumford and Sons and add some scuzzy guitar and drum machine, and you’ve got Judah and the Lion. They’re big in the States — the single Take It All Back (on here as Take It All Back 2) was top of the US alternative charts for ages. Given that our own inventors of this…
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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: The Echo of Pleasure
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are an American indie pop band, formed in 2007, and centred around songwriter Kip Berman. This is a nice album of heartfelt 80s pop but it suffers from the fact that The War On Drugs’ new album, which travels a similar road, is so much better. This is…
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Hawklords: Six
The whole Hawkwind / Hawklords thing is a bit of a problem: if you’ve liked the space rock mothership nonsense since 1823, when Dave Brock first strapped on a guitar, you like what you know and want what you like, and this is it. The rest of us, maybe not so. Hawklords feature former Hawkwind…
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Re-TROS: Before The Applause
Re-TROS were formerly known as Rebuilding The Rights Of Statues and, for entirely sensible reasons, have shortened it for this new album. They’re one of those Chinese bands (or Korean, or whatever) we sometimes get to review, copying Western rock but with the addition of quirkiness — something always gets lost in cultural translation. The…
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Liam Gallagher: As You Were
All the boy Liam has got to do to stay in the game is turn out stuff that’s not actually bad. He’s got the name and everyone likes him; the career is his to lose. But his post-Oasis output has been patchy. Even mad-for-it Oasis fans who’d buy any old rubbish Oasis released (and did)…
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