The Brakes have not always impressed me in the past; Give Blood has proved me wrong. Contained within the punchy, pithy and passionate half hour are sixteen pocket-sized tunes that contain off-kilter punk, blasting blues and experimental rock. There are excellent covers of the Jesus & Mary Chains Sometimes Always and Johnny Cash’s Jackson each […]

After setting SXSW alight with their punk rock the criminally young (they are all still at school in Nashville) Be Your Own Pet are releasing the brassy, defiant and catchy as hell Fire Department. Jemina Pearl, with a voice and attitude that should belong to a woman 10 years her senior, screams and yelps perfectly […]

The Brakes’ latest single is a touch of skuzzed up electro glam that explodes into angular rock for the chorus. While that may make them sound very experimental this is really a pop record that is designed to get a crowd moving, a vibe it succeeds in generating. The slow building from the simple bass […]

Bruce Dickinson, who may be more familiar as the frontman of Iron Maiden or as a radio Rock DJ, has created a solo album to follow on from 2002’s The Chemical Wedding (also re-released this week on Sanctuary). The sound will be familiar to all devotees of Iron Maiden as it is in the mould […]

ATD’s unconventional and uncompromisingly honest hip hop is refreshingly based around the vocals and uncluttered by the detritus of too long spent in the studio obsessing. Patrick is (at least semi-) autobiographical and about being young and in a bad scene in North Wales. By contrast there is the charmingly low tech track with the […]

After coming back to chart success (as The Poppy Fields) with 45RPM and then releasing their first studio album for over a decade (In The Poppyfields) The Alarm are releasing a third single from the album. The likeness to early U2 us so strong it cannot go without mention. Close has the earnest, and slightly […]

Brakes features the combined talents of British Sea Power’s Eamon, Tenderfoot’s Mark Beatty along with Tom and Alex from Electric Soft Parade. This indie super-group have created a guitar heavy number that clearly echoes Joy Division and late eighties indie rock.
The main single (The other tracks are short bookends) contains a tension from the first […]

Beans has taken hip-hop and twisted it to include a more eclectic electronic sound. The result is a backing that will be more familiar to Warp aficionados while being far less challenging than many of their other artists. The raps are slick, original and all the more refreshing for their avoidance of arrogant posturing, bank […]

New York punk outfit Mommy And Daddy, otherwise known as Vivian Sarratt and Edmond Hallas, were good enough to let Bob Gray shove a microphone in their faces for a while before they opened for the Wannadies at Reading’s Fez Club in November 2003. They had just got back to England from […]

Aberfeldy’s folk tinged pop comes with a playful side to match its comfortable jauntiness and softly crafted songs. Strings are plucked, strummed and bowed sweetly behind the vocal led songs on Young Forever. The previous singles Love Is An Arrow, Vegetarian Restaurant and Heliopolis By Night are demonstrative of the range of subject matter covered; […]