guitar
Pete Fij / Terry Bickers, Worthing Festival 2023 review - lyricism, amusing anecdotes and gorgeous guitar playingTuesday, 20 June 2023Pete Fij and Terry Bickers are bathed in muted red light. They are sat side-by-side, Fij with an acoustic guitar, Bickers with a vintage 1970s CMI hollow-bodied electric. Behind them, oil wheel lighting gloops and bubbles gently, bespattered with... Read more... |
Album: McFly - Power to PlayFriday, 09 June 2023When McFly returned to our loudspeakers in the summer of 2020 with Young Dumb Thrills, the record marked their first in a decade. The foursome, comprised of guitarist/vocalist Tom Fletcher, bassist/vocalist Dougie Poynter, guitarist/vocalist Danny... Read more... |
Album: Dream Wife - Social LubricationFriday, 02 June 2023Five years ago, breaking dry January a few days early, I joined a throng of folks amongst the merch boxes and strip lights of Rough Trade East to see Dream Wife. The London-based trio has come a long way since those small-scale shows in the backroom... Read more... |
Album: Vicente Archer - Short StoriesWednesday, 10 May 2023When is the right moment for a musician to step out of the shadows and release an album in her/his own name? Vicente Archer, one of the most in-demand NYC bassists around, has certainly taken his time. In his late forties, and with appearances on... Read more... |
The Orielles, G2, Glasgow review - shoegaze trio keeping their eyes on the futureTuesday, 11 April 2023It is temping to wonder what path the Orielles would have gone down in a world where the coronavirus never occurred. The Halifax trio had just released their second album, Disco Volador when the pandemic struck, and wiped out any hope of... Read more... |
Album: boygenius - The RecordFriday, 31 March 2023Maybe you’ve heard the Native American parable about the two wolves. An old Cherokee’s grandson is grappling with internal tensions; self-hatred and self-aggrandising. For Phoebe Bridgers, one-third of indie supergroup boygenius (usually styled with... Read more... |
Nick Mulvey, Chalk, Brighton review - cult star shines brightSaturday, 25 March 2023Welcome to the church of Mulvey. The sold-out venue is packed with a svelte crowd, mostly ranging in age between about 30 and 45. Nick Mulvey is playing a new number which has an air of lockdown-inspiration about it, with its lines about “missing... Read more... |
Kreator, Chalk, Brighton review - an invigoratingly relentless assaultTuesday, 14 March 2023Mille Petrozza is roaring into the mic, teeth gritted, black hair flailing. Behind his growl-screeching a triumphant martial riff is holding the “tune” and behind that, never-ceasing drum beats, an exercise in pure velocity.“The failed, the outcasts... Read more... |
Album: Måneskin - Rush!Friday, 20 January 2023Rock'n'roll rejuvenators, Eurovision winners with more of their songs streamed online than there are people in the world, the glammy young Roman rockers have opened for The Stones in Las Vegas, delivered a city-stopping sold-out show at Rome’s... Read more... |
Album: Iggy Pop - Every LoserWednesday, 11 January 2023Iggy Pop is one of rock’s great survivors but his fans are divided into two categories; those who claim he hasn’t done anything worthwhile since the late-Seventies and those, like this writer, who find much to enjoy, right up to the present.Every... Read more... |
Album: CVC - Get RealThursday, 05 January 2023CVC stands for Church Village Collective, a six-piece who hail from the countryside near Cardiff. They were the best live act I saw last year (of a long list which includes Melt Yourself Down, Paul McCartney, The Prodigy and Wet Leg). It was a... Read more... |
Album: White Lung - PremonitionThursday, 01 December 2022In 2016’s abrasive album opener, "Dead Weight", frontwoman Mish Barber-Way laments over multiple miscarriages as her biological clock ticks away like a malevolent metronome.How much has changed in the last six years, then, and none more so than for... Read more... |