indie
Veronica Lee
To describe this movie as slow-burn would be like saying snails live in the fast lane. The latest work from indie auteur Aaron Katz (Dance Party USA and Quiet City) who wrote, directed and edited, is 97 minutes long, but nothing happens for its first third and then when things do start happening - as the lead characters investigate the disappearance of a friend - the film abruptly ends. It may be layered with all manner of subtexts but they pretty much passed me by.Doug (Cris Lankenau) has dropped out of college in Chicago and moved back to his home town of Portland in Oregon to share a flat Read more ...
Russ Coffey
For weeks there have been rumours that the new Metronomy release would be electronica that would appeal to people who don’t really listen to it. The last bit, at least, is true. I don’t listen to much of that genre and yet every time I get to the end of The English Riviera I can’t resist hitting repeat. But here’s the thing - it’s not really that electronic. It’s what Metronomy man main, Joseph Mount, describes as “electronic music played using as many real instruments as possible”. And what that adds up to is a glorious mix of lo-fi, indie, pop and dance, with a fair few synths thrown in. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Drummers that sing lead are rare. Ones that sing while pounding away like Keith Moon are even rarer. Denmark’s Treefight for Sunlight are a talented lot, a four-piece who all sing, with three taking the lead. These are the vocals that drive the band and their melodies. Chuck in a wodge of psychedelic nous and you have an art-pop combo that can raise smiles and even the odd scream in hyper-cool Shoreditch. There’s little back story. From Copenhagen, Treefight for Sunlight formed in 2007. Their first single "Facing the Sun" was issued last May by Tambourhinoceros, the label run by a couple Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Post-rock shares more with prog rock than six letters. Both are rock music that doesn’t want to rock, be rock and are beyond quotidian rock. Of course, these labels are never self-defined. But post-rock is what Austin Texas’s Explosions in the Sky are lumped in with. Unlike prog rock, it’s not about flash technique. A guitars-and-drums four-piece, their instrumental music is about texture, rather than melody or verse-chorus-break structures. Sixth album Take Care Take Care Take Care doesn’t take them to new places though. It restates who and what they are.The last Explosions in the Sky album Read more ...
Russ Coffey
After a couple of false starts, former Beautiful South frontman Paul Heaton’s last solo album finally received the high critical praise of the old days. But at 49 you can’t imagine him really caring too much about anyone else’s approval. This is the ex-alcoholic, after all, whose last tour was conducted by bicycle around the pubs of the North of England, who unashamedly told the world he was once a football hooligan, and who once set up a community bike park in Hull. When they made Heaton, they sure as hell broke the mould.Stylistically, Acid Country, the new(ish) album, finally echoes much Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Low undeniably create a music of rare beauty. Elegiac and affecting, their unhurried evocations of intimacy urge reflection. They've ploughed this furrow for a while though. C’mon is Low’s ninth album. Their first was issued in 1994. Things are refined and occasionally tinkered with – 2007’s Drums and Guns was fitted with some ill-suited glitchy beats. But the sonic core remains. Is this stasis enough to sustain 17-plus years?C’mon is hugely seductive, the slow, distant, Mogadoned power-chord squall of “Witches” pulling you into something like a half-asleep Crazy Horse. “All you guys over Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Judging by the ballyhoo London’s Vaccines generated at the beginning of the year, it seemed a dead cert that they’d be pretty spiffy. If not the best thing since sliced bread, then they’d at least be fairly toothsome. Based on this, though – their debut album – it’s impossible to see what the fuss was about. What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? is alright, a bunch of familiar indie building blocks reassembled in a way that neither thrills nor surprises.Of course, there’s nothing wrong with music that reconfigures existing templates. If it sparkles, has verve and panache, and – cut-up Read more ...
Russ Coffey
To mark the release of their new single "Dilly" theartsdesk has limited-edition box sets of Band of Horses album Infinite Arms to give away. The box sets have a CD version, a vinyl version and artwork unique to the set. All potential winners have to do is to answer the four questions below, and just to make it easy the answers will be found by following the embedded links.
Band of Horses' latest album is called Infinite Arms, but what is the first song on the album?
Band of Horses' lead singer Ben Bridwell is sometimes compared to Neil Young. What was the title of the last Neil Young album? Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It seems to me that Esben and the Witch would like to perform in absolute darkness. Or perhaps in silhouette behind a screen like an oriental shadowplay. Such a theatrical device might even suit their dark, menacing music. Instead, two of the three band members have to make do with a curtain of hair between themselves and the audience. Young and shy, they deliver their moody, occasionally explosive music with low-key confidence and, in fact, their slight awkwardness in front of a crowd only enhances the edginess of the atmospherics.Outside, the Brighton night is aptly overcome with mist which Read more ...
Russ Coffey
P J Harvey has been shouty, and she has been tremulous. She has crunched guitars and caressed pianos. She has explored almost every emotion experienced on an ever-evolving musical journey. But on Let England Shake, her first solo album for almost four years, she’s turned away from the world within to give her take on the island on which she lives. And this bittersweet reflection feels like the culmination of everything she's been before.There’s nothing as radio-friendly here as 2000’s "Good Fortune", but it’s still her most immediate and accessible album yet. And that’s down to the beauty of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It’s a testament to the authenticity of the Scottish folk ethos that this band even exists. A bunch of mid-career songwriters going on a musicians' retreat, getting caught in the vibe, and deciding to form a band. It sounds like something from the Sixties. So sometimes do they, at least when Karine Polwart goes all Sandy Denny. And they half look it too, with eight of them on stage swapping vocal duties as a musical collective. And then there’s the hippy names like King Creosote and MC Soom T, which sound more jazz than folk. But despite being both experimental and folkie in their approach, Read more ...
theartsdesk
In the next instalment of our Year Out/Year In series, theartsdesk's New Music writers cast a critical eye over 2010, and offer some recommendations for 2011, incorporating some very funky videos. Our selection of recommended albums from the past year ranges wildly over electronica, world, jazz, indie, rock and folk. We also note some disasters and sad losses. Written by Howard Male, Peter Culshaw, Russ Coffey, Peter Quinn, Bruce Dessau, Kieron Tyler and Thomas H Green.PETER CULSHAWGood things about 2010 Brad Mehldau's surpisingly successful mix of classical, film and jazz music for the Read more ...