James Yorkston has a new album out, called Roaring the Gospel. It’s not really a new album as such, more a compilation of b-sides and other rarities released throughout his recording career. The collection goes back to before he recorded under his own name – his first release was as J Wright Presents, a 7 [...]
Just before the much heralded opening of Rough Trade’s new Brick Lane store later this week (that’s it in the pic above), here’s a related post. As I suggested last week, I finally got round to ripping some of my haul from the Rough Trade Covent Garden shop closing down sale last week. Plenty of [...]
So The White Stripes are back, and if the reviews of Icky Thump were to be believed, back on form. But hold on a minute – since when did it become received wisdom that Get Behind Me Satan was not much cop? I say rubbish, because I still love that album – in fact it’s [...]
I was never much of a Test Icicles fan (though the Braxe/ Falke remix of What’s Your Damage was amazing) so I wasn’t too disappointed when they called it day last year before everyone was expecting. I actually quite admired their decision to stop because they weren’t really into it anymore. I wish so many [...]
This was originally meant to be a quick post before the weekend. Now it’s a quick post to start the week. A killer remix by MSTRKRFT doing their usual excellent reworking - this time of Chromeo’s forthcoming single Tenderoni.
All I know about Chromeo, I learned from music like dirt’s post on their Water Rats show [...]
So, moving on from lo-fi noise to pretty much the opposite end of the musical spectrum. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve grown to like the latest Rufus Wainwright album Release the Stars, due to much playing of it by Mrs Growl round our way. His opulent orchestrations sure make a change from stripped down folk [...]
As a natural follow-on from yesterday’s post on No Age, here we have Health, fellow LA scenesters and hangers-out at The Smell. I don’t know so much about their music because they’ve not got an album out yet – that comes out on Lovepump United on 18 September. Until then, we’ve got the split 7 [...]
No Age is another band who crept up on me unawares. I think the first time I heard about them was on the Upset! The Rhythm website, who put on a few gigs by the LA band in London recently. Then a heap of their records seemed to land in Rough Trade all at once [...]
After all the articles about the ‘death of the single’ (that seems so long ago now) and more recently about the ‘death of the album’, it looks like we’re seeing the start of features on the death of the record shop. This one in The Guardian, was precipitated by the sad demise of the Fopp [...]
It’s funny how music can creep up on you totally unawares, and before you know it, very quickly become a bit of an obsession. The other day I was having a chat with my record collecting colleague about Map of Africa and their super limited and in-demand self-titled album. I had a listen, but didn’t [...]
