album – and so she thinks

Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile – Lotta Sea Lice

admin — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 07:31:46 +0000

Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, have joined forces to release Lotta Sea Lice, a collaboration as unique and creative. The album, as you might expect, is utterly unpredictable, yet feels strangely ‘right,’ as though the pair are just picking up a long running conversation. Unvarnished, there’s a real energy and humour to the work, ramped up a level with the help of their friends – Jim White of the Dirty Three, Stella Mozgawa from Warpaint and even Mick Harvey to play. From the jam of first single Over Everything to the bluesy Let It Go and delicate Continental Breakfast, it’s a varied piece that showcases their talent to the max. The album is released October 13th on Marathon Recordings.

The Big Moon – Pull The Other One

admin — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 07:13:26 +0000

Boisterous guitar led pop with its tongue firmly in its cheek, The Big Moon haven’t changed their formula for success on Pull The Other One. But when it sounds this vital and fun, why would you? From the debut album Love In The 4th Dimension.

NIAGARA – Escher Surfer

admin — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:22:37 +0000

On Escher Surfer NIAGARA demonstrate a clear understanding of what makes pop tune and a half – electronic glitches, brooding psychedelic funk and a rousing chorus. Pulsing basslines ebb and flow underneath textured synths before building into a rave epic. The first single to taken from the Italian duo’s new album Hyperocean, to be released May 6th 2016 via Monotreme Records, it can be a wearying listen, but well worth it.

Quilt – Plaza

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 16:50:04 +0000

Quilt’s latest album Plaza is such a varied patchwork of multi layered folk, Americana, twiddling psych and choral music that at times I had to flick back to check I was still listening to the same band. Evoking a sound of campestral serendipity and tawny shimmer, it’s a sharply executed album that reeks of wanderlust that stays rooted at its core in catchy riffs and appealing melodies. Seamless windswept blossoming on Elliot Street follows autumnal tumult on Roller, whilst Searching For is a lush sixties infused pop ditty and O’Connor’s Barn hints at influences from Warpaint and Waxahatchee. Threadbare but buoyant, there’s a feeling of happen stance in its felicity and sentiment, a quelled sense of exploration as the day rolls by and the road opens up.
https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2310404761/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/
Originally published in London In Stereo.

Introducing…Hero Fisher

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 13:52:00 +0000

Hero Fisher‘s new album Delivery is steely, stark, and sexy. Full of edges, the tunes scratch at the skin like only an old lover can, but despite such resonance and immediacy, they’re not necessarily what Hero heard in the first place, and she acknowledges that it can be difficult to get what is in her head in to the instruments and on record. ‘I don’t always hear what I want to hear and so I’ve given myself the job to put down what I can hear in my head and hope it’ll either please me or someone else.’

Her work is more descriptive of an atmosphere rather than storytelling and following a character, evocative and charismatic, raw and dirty. Scratchy melodies and glitchy beats are melded together with pounding synths into resoundingly strong tunes that are not without a hint of sass. Born in London, raised in France, lived in Australia, now living in London and having recorded the album in New York, she says that all the locations have ‘all have different appeals for me although I think the English weather is what’s ingrained in me the most. If I’m imagining a landscape, chances are you’ll find somewhere like it in the UK!’

It’s been something of a process, and the songs have evolved and developed as Hero has herself. ‘I don’t think it’s possible to foresee what an album will sound like until you decide it’s done. Especially a debut album. I didn’t even have a band when we started! I’m really happy with it though- I think it’s a very special piece of work and I don’t regret a thing. I’m so glad it’s finally out and that I got to do it on my own terms.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrR7CnS889U

The grungy and dirty sounds to the songs are deliberate and reflective of Hero.’ It suits my mood.’ she says, and it’s a mood well conveyed on single Brutish Words. Her work is very much collaborative, with producers Bradley Spence and Charlie Russell giving the tunes a power, and she credits Saul Wodak who plays guitar in the band with ‘great visions when it comes to arrangements, soundscapes, rifs, and live performances. He also inspires me to branch out and work on other things than my own songs. I’d be lying to myself if I said I was solo.

Whilst touring the UK this autumn she’s also putting the work in writing songs for a new album. It’s going to be a busy few months for Hero Fisher.

‘See you there suckers.’

Catch her playing acoustic shows at The Star in Tuffnell Park, before a tour with Fufanu.

Lanterns On The Lake – Beings

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 09:40:43 +0000

When you hear Hazel Wilde speak in her broad Geordie accent after she’s sung in soaring and sensitive tones you’re reminded of the complexity of human beings, the highs and lows, fragility and grit that plays the harmony of life. Lanterns on The Lake have always made glacial and evocative music that manages to traverse the emotional glue of being, being both innately hypnotic and full of unfurling spit. Elevated and heavenly yet surprisingly dark and filled with crunching energy, new album Beings sweeps with breadth and depth, racing across the landscape in a cascade of seething streaks of enchantment. Airy, chiming beauty shifts into dense, forbidding scoundscapes as menacing chords and pounding beats mingle with radio static and twinkling melodies. Turning the knob on electronica and veering out from their dream pop roots, this is a brave, anthemic and dynamic step forward.
Released November 13th on Bella Union.

Night Beds – Ivywild

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 08:34:00 +0000

There’s one thing guaranteed to find success in 2015, and that’s a 23 year old singer songwriter lamented his troubled life of love and loss. Vulnerable and expansive, Winston Yellen’s Night Beds is the sound of a journey and the documentation of the emotions that contort with it. There’s nothing revolutionary to a man with a guitar, but there’s nothing revolutionary about human experience – the talent is in making it sound personal and universal at the same time. Desolate and lonely, Yellen’s vocals trigger wintry chills with a sense of spring hope through its expansiveness and openness, the alt-rock twang and electro beats quivering together with gliding gravitas. New album Ivywild is a collaborative effort, performed and produced with a makeshift team of 25 musicians, released on August 7th 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnrEV4PI0WU

Trust Fund – No One's Coming For Us

admin — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 17:46:24 +0000

Debut album No One’s Coming For Us by Trust Fund, the brainchild and output of Bristol’s Ellis Jones, is filled with a sparklingly melancholy and elements of pained introspection. There’s singalong choruses and shoegazey fuzz on Cut Me Out, upbeat rhythms on Sadness, as well as optimistic high pitched indie pop songcraft, a la Essay To Write. Ellis Jones is a proficient and clever writer, with the talent for creating a hooky tune, and has selected the perfect rafter of friends for his first full length. Just signed to label Turnstile Music, also home to Los Campesinos and Gruff Rhys, Trust Fund have created a short, snappy and earnest LP quivering with personality.
[bandcamp width=350 height=470 album=2131047522 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false]

The Adult Teeth Recording Company Recording Sampler

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 08:03:14 +0000

https://adultteeth.bandcamp.com/album/sampler-the-best-of-adult-teeth-2012-2014
As the sun streams through my window it seems crazy to be discussing the end of the year and any best of compilations. But let’s not see this as an end, but rather a celebration of awesome tunes over the last two years – even if they do all come from that most unlikely of spots: Hull. Adult Teeth is a label dedicated to putting out new music from the North Eastern city and has grown from being a bedroom label to really seizing the studio with latest recordings, but continues to span indie, alternative, experimental, electronic, spoken word and ambient genres. Experimental solo pop from My Pleasure, the frantic TV Speak from La Bete Blooms (who I have previously interviewed here), a lot from art-rock duo Glass Illusion including a collaboration with Leeds based poet Matthew Hedley Stoppard, along with tunes from Blackface, Mt Judge, Foolish Atoms and My One Band.

Cloud Nothings – Now Hear In

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 19:55:00 +0000

“I was feeling pretty good about everything so I just made stuff that made me happy.” That’s what songwriter Dylan Baldi of Cloud Nothings has to say about their new album Hear And Nowhere Else (out now on Wichita), and more music should come from such a happy place. Not that it’s all grins and rainbows – with the start of their world tour the band have released the grainy video of granite fuelled fuzz bomb Now Hear In, splices of grainy, manipulated, archive and shot footage that follows “a loose cyclical theme of identity and ego-birth/death” (director Jordan Blackmon of Toro Y Moi and Fork & Spoon Records fame). Deep shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgFvNKwxYQo