Discovery Of The Week: Cassels
Step into most crusty, dog-eared Camden boozers and you’ll still find an old skinhead in a Clash t-shirt perched on the end of the bar decrying the loss of punk spirit from today’s bands – and they kind of have…
Author Archives: Kevin Irwin
Track Review: Mourning Birds – ‘Exile’
Bringing the season of goodwill and peace to all man to a screeching halt, Kent trio Mourning Birds deliver a much needed slice of ragged, earth-scorching, garage rock that is so ear bleedingly loud and ferocious that it could even…
Anais Mitchell LIVE @ Union Chapel, Islington 25.11.14
Rating: In a spotlight under the grand, gothic majesty of Union Chapel’s celestial setting, Vermont singer/songwriter Anais Mitchell cuts a fidgety, elfish figure brimming with cheery personality and a gentle intensity. Her legs flex uncontrollably, head wiggles and shoulders twitch…
Unsigned Act Of The Week: Jim Valentine
Crawling out of neon lit, dingy Glasgow back alleys with their slicked back quiffs and upturned leather jackets, Jim Valentine are a Marlon Brando biker gang from another age ready to unleash rock and roll thunder. When they do, it…
ALBUM REVIEW: iC1s ‘In the Blink of an Eye’
With the demise of Beady Eye, Arctic Monkeys lost somewhere in the California desert and The Courteeners struggling for airplay, Kasabian stand as the remaining bastions of swaggering ladrock still capable of sending muddy fields into a giant beer soaked,…
ALBUM REVIEW: Deerhoof ‘La Isla Bonita’
Rating: I tried hard to read James Joyce’s Ulysses, really, I did. And some of those first three pages made an iota of sense. I nearly made it through two episodes of that Scandinavian crime drama The Killing that everyone…
ALBUM REVIEW: Pink Floyd ‘The Endless River’
Rating: Sending a fond farewell to keyboard player Rick Wright who died of cancer in 2008, The Endless River takes recordings made during sessions in 1993 and re-works them into the final chapter of the Pink Floyd story. Originally intended…
Ones To Watch: Feldspar. Track Review – ‘Beautiful People’
Lighters out for the swooning, crooning indie of the season, as Feldspar channel Keane, Snow Patrol and The National (minus the crusty hangover taste) on self-released third single ‘Beautiful People’. Centred around the delicate songwriting talents of Will Green, they…
ALBUM REVIEW: Parkay Quarts ‘Content Nausea’
Rating: As hype grew and Parquet Courts became the discerning name to drop, their breakthrough album Light Up Gold (2012) was dismissed in some quarters as cynical Brooklyn hipsters, regurgitating tired garage rock riffs for the VICE generation. It always…