If music hadn’t found him and permitted him self-expression, Pat Dam Smyth would have excelled as a performance poet, the curious fervency of his voice long nourished by the proselytising city in which he made his musical bones. The Northern…
“People ask me, how the hell did you wangle a week in Abbey Road?” says Chris Sheehan over a coffee in the ‘canteen’ down the corridor from Studio 2. We’ve just witnessed Pat Dam Smyth put the finishing touches to…
‘If you have to kick against the pricks, must you mention them by name?’ asked John Osborne once upon a time. The answer, in this case, is No. There is not enough time to kick out against a confederacy of…
The concept album has returned with Waiting Rooms, the second and long-awaited album by Samantha Whates, a Scottish singer-songwriter in whose smiling, gimlet eyes smoulders something rare. The album comes at a curious time in the life of the country…
We’re downstairs just south of Denmark Street. It’s still 1966 down here, such is the décor and the quietude that’s reminiscent of an older, softer London. A table top separates us and, though his eyes are watchful, far back within…
A sketchy, animated lyric video, the accompaniment for Pat Dam Smyth’s latest track ‘Blue Lights,’ perfectly mirrors the haunting nostalgia of the track. Recalling Pat and his teenage band’s first headline show, when a bomb scare saw the venue evacuated…
To mark the end of a brilliant year, packed with too much fantastic new music to keep track of, I’ve trawled through all the Tracks of the Weeks of 2017 to pick out my favourite track from each month, and…
Last week, the new music & conference showcase Off The Record returned to Manchester, bringing with it a whole load of new music, as well as talks about the music industry from the likes of Cabbage, False Heads and countless…
With the warm, sweetness of Lucy Rose, but a sharpness reminiscent of Kate Nash, Lauran Hibberd’s new track ‘Old Head Young Shoulders’ is enough to have anyone hooked. At just 19, Lauran has refined her sound: one which is both…