Review Corner

Category: Rock

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    Graham Nash: This Path Tonight

      With so many rock legends boarding the great tour bus in the sky, the surviving performers can be forgiven existential thoughts. This new offering from the former Hollies/CSNY man opens with the line “Where are we going” and goes on: “I may not know where I’m going/But I’m on this path tonight”. This slightly…

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    Flowers: Everybody’s Dying To Meet You

    Flowers’ debut Do What You Want To, It’s What You Should Do left us completely underwhelmed in the Review Corner, a sort of My Bloody Valentine lite with a female voice (she’s called Rachael Kennedy) we could never take too. Imagine what Little Red Hood would sound like if she ate the gingerbread house and…

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    Kano: Made In The Manor

    Everything about this says it’s not aimed at the Review Corner: we’re unlikely to use the word “manor” to describe any place we ever lived and we were never the types to pretend we were from Brixton instead of Congleton, and so unlikely to use the words bloodclart, gyal or dem. Still, Kano has a…

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    EPs – Meadowlark, John Parry

    Meadowlark:  Paraffin We’ve been doing this reviewing lark man and boy for 15 years or so and Meadowlark’s last EP is one of our favourite releases over that period. It came out last year but rarely a week goes by without us playing it. It’s an aural relaxant; nice melody but chilled and the dreamy…

  • White Denim: Stiff

    This is such a good album it’s almost a triviality having to write anything. “It’s really good, buy it”, is about the sum of it. The name White Denim is a bad one for a band that plays such lush, classic rock, and the sleeve is pretty dire. Instead of the lairy indie rock you’d…

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    Man Made: Television Broke My Brain

    This album from new band Man Made is addictive as crack. At first play through we thought it was enjoyable, solid power pop. At the second play through it all sounded happily familiar and at the fourth play we had to force ourselves to take it off the CD player and do some work. Opener…

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    Elevant: There Is A Tide

    This is the third album we’ve had from Elevant, a Liverpool band treading their own furrow. Their ambition to get their music out there has always been a few steps ahead of their actual level of accomplishment: the music has always been impressive but (we felt) lacked that spark that would encourage anyone but friends…

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    Barry Adamson: Know Where To Run

    We’ve been listening to Adamson for many years without realising it: he played with Magazine, and was on their punk classic Shot by Both Sides in 1977. He’s played with bands ever since, most recently Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on 2013’s Push the Sky Away. He’s a man who’s worked hard at his…

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    Kimmo Pohjonen: Sensitive Skin

    They’re pleasantly mad in Finland: any country that would enter a hard rock/heavy metal band into the Eurovision Song Contest has got to be eccentric. The fact that Mr Lordi won shows that we find such behaviour endearing. Thus with this, a prog album from an accordionist, featuring the Kronos Quartet and distributed by the…

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    Panic! At The Disco: Death Of A Bachelor

    This OTT album sees Brendon Urie simultaneously impress with his talents and leave the listener slightly baffled. It’s a mix between MCR emo at its most burlesque and the operatic classic rock of Queen — “Let me be a killer queen” he sings within seconds of the opening so it’s clear what the influences are.…