This week, I intend to spend most of my lunchtimes at Pure Groove. They’ve got a gig on at 1:15pm every day, which is good news for me, even though I can’t really take full part in their Ale Festival, which is also running all this week. Yesterday was a pleasant time sitting listening to [...]
Although having a David Sitek-produced album will make people sit up and take notice of you, I’d like to think that there’s more to Holly Miranda’s music than studio trickery from a renowned producer. I’m also sure that the folks at XL looked further than the TV on the Radio man when they signed her [...]
I know this MAP thing is meant to be all about the new music, but this month, my contribution is an old favourite. I thought I’d introduce the international blogging peeps to Jeremy Warmsley, ace London singer-songwriter and all-round top bloke. The track I’ve posted is from last year’s How We Became album, but the [...]
So there I am, spending some time last week reminding myself of how good The Blue Nile were (have you heard Hats? it’s amazing), and along comes a tune could well have been made by the elusive Glasgow trio if they had been much younger, cooler dudes with fizzier synths, bigger beats and a more [...]
They know how to put on a show. ‘Course they do. They’ve been doing it for what seems like decades. In fact, some may argue, they’ve been doing the same show for the past ten years. Now, although that’s sort of true, each time they have new songs and new tricks. And even though you [...]
So Marina Diamandis is the next Kate Bush? My fear is that she’s the next Florence and the Machine. Name similarities aside, I suspect that now Marina and the Diamonds are signed to a major label, there will be a similar process of musical dulling-down, at the same time as marketing the artist as a [...]
When I hear albums like this, I get convinced that there’s no need for expensive recording studios, engineers, producers or any of that stuff. If you’re Merrill Garbus all you need is a digital voice recorder and Audacity, or so the legend goes. Whatever the case, this is a triumph of lo-fi pop that draws [...]
They’ve done four excellent festivals. They’ve got a record label. And now they’ve got a film division. At least that’s what it looks like, since Simon Taffe, one of the organisers of big Growl favourite End of the Road Festival, is one of the people behind this lovely stop-motion animated video for The Low Anthem’s [...]
In the end the main difference is the scale. Camera Obscura put on a good show, but it’s hard not to compare this gig with the previous time I’ve seen the Glasgow band this year. That was back in March at The Lexington when they played their first gig after recording their latest album My [...]
This blog is no stranger to the agreeable chamber folk-pop of Left With Pictures - we’ve had singles on here, we’ve had a Seven Songs, and now after an extended wait, we have their newly released debut album. Those who have been following the band’s output to date will be familiar with a few of [...]
