REVIEWS
Album reviews
While they may have dished out gongs to the likes of Paolo Nutini and The Feeling in recent years, the songwriting and composing figureheads...
From the moment you set eyes on Time Travel, the latest offering from grandly-named 20 year-old Alessi Laurent-Marke, you can't...
Justin Vallesteros, the Californian behind the nostalgic bedroom pop of...
Wit’s End is the fifth full-length offering from Californian Cass McCombs, comprised of eight hushed compositions sewn...
If, for some odd reason, you were to skip the first eight tracks on Belong and only listen to the last two songs on...
An NME journalist once wrote that if he ever heard another band that sounded like The Beach Boys he would scream. Melodramatic shrieks aside, his point was...
Caught live
To date in her career Newcastle-born folkie Beth Jeans Houghton has managed to elude simple classification, with critics often preferring to focus on her o...
Today is Elaine Mai's birthday. But if the slouched Sugar Club crowd aren't exactly leading a singsong in her honour, the Galwegian doesn't appear t...
It’s been a long wait for a second album from Miracle Fortress. The band, essentially a vehicle for Mo...
Why do so many thousands flock each year to the so-called 'big' festivals? Bigger distances from tent to stage, bigger queues everywhere, bigger crowds, bigger ticket prices – these are all a...
Arriving at Ally Pally for tonight's triple-header of modern classic album performances, credit must go to promoters ATP, who have made every effort to con...
Chance is not something that's altogether synonymous with live music. The band tends to lay down certain markers, perhaps the most obvious being the proximity of the tour to their most recent album...
Give the people what they want. Not a phrase you'd readily associate with a Ryan Adams live show based on past form, but one that nonetheless...
On a night of mutual harmonic appreciation in the capital, opening act The Bees take to the Apollo stage with the unenviable task of...
Avoiding the first person in review. It’s a good rule to stick to as much as possible unless you are gonna run off on a Hunter S Thompson tip. I’m not gonna do that (did you see that? I...
“How does that old song go?...”
As a document of a band falling apart, it’s hard to top Mercury R...
