If you read super-fast through the past few months of this blog it would go a bit like… blah blah Beth Jeans Houghton… blah blah Beth Jeans Houghton… but that’s because there’s a lot of love here at Daily Growl HQ for Newcastle’s own purveyor of fine pop and wearer of huge wigs. There’s also [...]
So here he is again, for the second time this week, our man Rob Jones with his amazing one-man band he calls The Voluntary Butler Scheme. Yesterday I introduced him to my global colleagues on the Music Alliance Pact, and now it’s the turn of Rob himself to give us his seven songs. I should [...]
Let’s take a little side-step shall we? The meat and drink of this blog is folky, indie type stuff, and there’s just generally been too much beardiness going on lately. So today I’m changing the rhythm a bit for Gold Panda, shadowy purveyor of top-grade glitchy electronica. His output so far is three EPs which [...]
Hey, the Musical Alliance Pact is now one year old. It kicked off in October 2009 with 12 countries. A year on, it’s become a behemoth boasting 34 nations, all bigging up their homegrown musical talents. Props to Jason Pop Cop for getting all this started, making it happen every month and keeping us all [...]
Stories are a big part of my life these days. Bedtime stories mainly, but stories at any part of the day really, as Growl Junior whets her vast appetite for books. So with two years of being softened up by children’s stories, it’s perhaps no surprise that I love the the b-side to Aidan Moffat’s [...]
Here’s the second part of the track-by-track rundown on Balletesque, the new album from The Young Republic, by lead singer Julian Saporiti. Here he tells us more about the Nashville band’s second (or first proper) album, including how to pronounce the title, how they found their groove and how you might find yourself in some [...]
What sort of music were Kill It Kid listening to when they were growing up? Actually, it’s not too hard to answer that, though I don’t know how many of today’s teenagers are steeped in delta blues, country, old folk music and classic American rock. But how else could a band so young arrive sounding [...]
Today’s a long-awaited one. It finally sees the release of The Young Republic’s Balletesque. Not that I’ve been waiting all this time though; I’ve been lucky enough to had a copy for a while, and long-time readers (are there any of these?) will have heard me enthusing at various points this year. But it’s out [...]
Some things change, some things stay the same. Richard Hawley seems to have these in exactly the right proportions. His new album Truelove’s Gutter gets it exactly right. The familiar, late-night melancholic crooning that everyone knows from his previous five albums is present, correct and marvellous. But unlike previous long-player Lady’s Bridge which was basically [...]
When the official confirmation of The Verve’s third split came a couple of months ago, the only response was a collective shrug, as Richard Ashcroft slunk off to nurse the ruins of both his solo and band career. Simon Tong must have watched the whole charade with a wry smile. He wasn’t in the reunited [...]
