It’s a little known fact that when John Squire left The Stone Roses, the choice for his replacement came down to Aziz Ibrahim and Slash. Aziz only got the gig because he didn’t wear leather trousers on stage. I know this…
I am often kept awake at night concerned at that Rock N Roll is dead. Then the leather-jacketed, black-mop haired Ryan Jarman stomps onto a stage erected in an abandoned Liverpool dockside, lobs a can of Fosters into the crowd, grabs…
Flo Morrissey stares doe-eyed down the barrel of a Sound City Saturday afternoon crowd, her petite frame looking ever more wispy under the weight of an acoustic guitar. For most 19-year-olds or folk musicians for that matter, the concept of playing…
Rating: A very good friend just dropped a tonne on two concert tickets and every kind of format this album comes in. “You can’t put a price on the Queen, nothing’s too much,” he said over pint earlier this week. I don’t…
I am absolutely not the first to point out that more often than not, when we talk about women in music, we instantly plonk them into the old pigeonholes of either Madonna (not pop god Madonna, the biblical, virginal one…)…
I’ve always said that Manchester is the only other city with a vibe similar to New Orleans. Well, on 27th February, the two cities met up on Oxford Road, a brave move on the part of NOLA with it being…
What if Billie Jean wasn’t just a baby-trapping hussy? What if Eleanor Rigby really wasn’t arsed about being on her own? What if somebody came up with an album that pulled the rug up from under everything you thought about…
Rating: Rejoice! Somebody has finally played a stack of quality indie records to the youth of Canada, the country that previously “gifted” us with Bryan Adams and Justin Bieber, and man they’ve got creative with it! Proof that in the…
“I don’t wanna wait anymore, I’m tired of looking for answers” came from the beautifully harmonised mouths of Swedish duo First Aid Kit on ‘Silver Lining’, the first single from Stay Gold. I didn’t realise how poignant this was until recently. I…
Rating: “I’m a natural born sinner,” Ryan Adams says, staring at the ceiling of Manchester’s Albert Hall, “so this building could bring me down at any time.” However we all know sinners make the sweetest rock and roll, and last…