indie
Kieron Tyler
It kicks off with “No Easy Way Down.” First released on 1984’s mini-LP Explosions in the Glass Palace, it was an instant benchmark by which to measure Rain Parade. Churning, dense and foggy, it made good on what this California outfit were portrayed as: integral to a Sixties-inspired wave of bands defiantly reconfiguring the past for the present. Not all Rain Parade songs were like this, but “No Easy Way Down” was a head-spinner. It still is.What was dubbed The Paisley Underground also scooped up The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate, The Long Ryders and The Three O’Clock. But “No Easy Way Down” Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The current trend for package tours with two headliners appears to be growing, and this jaunt presented somewhat unlikely bedfellows – the theatrical angst of Billy Corgan’s crew and Rivers Cuomo’s indie trendsetters united by a shared love for guitar histrionics, 90s nostalgia for those who remember MTV2 and not much else.Fitting both bands in required an early onstage time (pity support act Teen Mortgage, who trundled onstage at 6.30pm), while the night’s format presented a few quirks that resembled a festival, from the heavy turnover of people moving about between sets to a clear need for Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHAriel Sharratt & Matthias Kom Never Work (BB*Island) + Ella Ronen The Girl With No Skin (BB*Island)Two offbeat albums from the uncategorisable Hamburg label BB*Island. They are home to the literary indie outfit The Burning Hell. The central figures of that band are Canadian singers Mathias Kom and Ariel Sharratt (assuming the latter is Canadian as Google wouldn't tell me). Together, their second album is a concept affair loaded with brilliant, poignant freak-folk responses to contemporary capitalism, the gig economy and similar. These include the inspiring title track “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I feel ashamed because I couldn’t become the man that you always hoped I’d become.” The line is repeated during “Father,” The Art of the Lie’s third track. After this, there’s “Mother and Son,” “Daddy” and the allusive “The Child Catcher”. Parent-child relations, from either perspective, are key to John Grant’s sixth solo album. Specifically, how these have rippled through his life to form his present-day self.The US-born though now Iceland national’s follow-up to 2021’s Boy from Michigan is not just about interpreting growing up in a context which would not accept him as gay. The scope is Read more ...
mark.kidel
At 81, John Cale, an immensely prolific, wide-ranging and innovative musician, continues to take risks, making music that may not always be instantly appealing, but always true to an artist’s authentic path. Hot on the heels of Mercy (2023), in which he collaborated with a number of off-centre cutting-edge talents, he has produced another album full of surprises and yet immediately recognisable as his own work.He has written music and lyrics and plays most of the instruments, as well as co-producing the album with long-term collaborator Nida Scott. The guitarist Dustin Boyer contributes Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
While some tracks on Marina Allen’s third album are country accented and a pedal steel is used a few times, it’s impossible to categorise Eight Pointed Star as Americana. Its sixth track, “Easy”, has the closeted atmosphere of The Velvet Underground’s third album. Next up, the driving “Love Comes Back” has a dash of former Go-Between Robert Forster about it.However, the nods towards a previously uncharted rootsiness do confirm a change in emphasis for the US singer-songwriter. Eight Pointed Star lacks the jazziness of Allen’s last album, 2022’s Centrifics. The very precise arrangements from Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When the Lovely Eggs’ married duo of Holly Ross and David Blackwell took to the stage at the recently rebranded XOYO in Birmingham on Bank Holiday Monday, they looked like they should be playing for two completely separate bands. She was looking glam, dressed like a guitar wielding Rόisín Murphy, with a blonde bob and orange and black tiger print dress, while he slid behind his drum kit in a washed-out tour t-shirt and a Johnny Ramone haircut.Once they burst into the speedy, buzz saw guitar powered “Death Grip Kids”, however, any ideas of a musical mismatch were immediately dispelled. The Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Natasha Khan’s musical career has always explored the artier end of pop. Her latest album, her sixth and first in five years, is more akin to the soundtrack work she did with Swiss composer Dominik Scherrer on BBC spook-thriller Requiem in 2018 than her Bat For Lashes albums.There are not many actual songs. Instead, lots of “pieces”, most of them between two and three minutes long. Ethereal in tone, enjoyment depends on an ability to roll with gossamer fairy waftings. Instead, this writer grew bored.The album is titled in honour of Khan’s daughter and she terms these sonic snapshots “song Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Isobel Campbell has maintained a consistent career on the fringes of popular music for three decades. She's made a home in the area where indie, folk, rock and BBC 6Music merge. Aside from her 1990s involvement with Belle and Sebastian, she’s best-known for her trio of albums with the late Mark Lanegan, her gracefulness and crafted precision working well against his gruff world weariness. Following that, she was scuppered for a while by legal label entanglements, but since 2020 has been up and at ‘em again, following her own path. The best word for her latest album is “shimmering”; 13 head- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The final track of Samana’s third album is titled “The Preselis,” after the west Welsh mountain range – the place antiquarians suggested as the source of Stonehenge’s blue stones. The song’s opening lyrics are “The blue stones, they grow over me, Carved into mountains, the blood of need.” Later, the words “anima” and “animus” are repeated before the song ends with the recurring refrain “Lay the body down.”Dovetailing a tenet of Jungian psychology – anima, the female unconscious of a male, and animus, the male unconscious of a female – with notions of an evocative landscape firmly places Read more ...
caspar.gomez
If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.Every Great Escape’s closing Saturday it’s taken over by Sounds Australia, offering a fresh selection of what that country has to offer. And there’s a bar, of course, where, at midday, photographer Finetime and I avail ourselves of a traditional media breakfast of BrewDog Wingman pale ale (4.3%).The first music of the day is a short set by Tamara Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like the trash compactor in the first Star Wars film.THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM BITThere is a boycott, by around 25% of booked artists, of Brighton’s annual multi-venue showcase for new and rising bands. This is in protest at sponsor Barclays Bank’s involvement with arms companies trading with Israel as that country instigates the ongoing and catastrophic Gaza bloodbath. The boycott was begun a couple of months ago as a petition by Bristol punk outfit The Read more ...