The Daily Growl

Yesterday, for propably the last time, I went down to Pure Groove in Smithfields. Since it opened there in 2008, I’ve been there many times – to buy records, to drink coffee and most of all for their excellent instore gigs. Their lunchtime shows have sustained me with live music when getting out to gigs [...]

It’s sunny, it’s spring, so time to head down to the river. If you’d like some live music while you’re there, how about The Tamesis Dock, a converted, 1933 Dutch barge, now doubling as a bar-restaurant and a gig venue. And starting next week, there’s a whole bunch of Daily Growl-friendly shows, put on by [...]

Last year it was all about the warehouse worker who found himself rubbing shoulders with the stars after being nominated for an Ivor Novello award. The press loves a plucky underdog. This year the mainstream media stories are all over the concept cricket album. How quaint. Given that I neither understand nor care about cricket, [...]

These days, it’s increasingly hard to go to a gig without knowing something about the bands playing. When was the last time you were surprised by someone popping up on a bill who you’ve never heard, and never even heard of before? It seems like years since that happened to me, until last December.
First up [...]

Given that the bands which make up Brighton’s Willkommen Collective share so many members, it’s surprising that there’s so much diversity. Take for instance The Leisure Society and Sons of Noel and Adrian, who are about to head out on tour together. The Leisure Society are the ones with the stirring, sweeping and melancholy tunes, [...]

I don’t really do news on this blog, but for me this is no ordinary music news. And even better, it’s the most appropriate follow-on from the previous post on Alex Chilton. Yes, five years from Man-Made, my actual teenage heroes Teenage Fanclub are releasing a new album. This may not be a terribly long [...]

He’s back! Awesome bearded one-man band and king of the offbeat tweets, Stairs to Korea returns with another single on the all conquering Brainlove records. All of Your Friends was the highlight of the set when I saw him recently, and is another in the gradual drip-feed of fine pieces of lo-fi electronics and ace [...]

It’s too late to talk about the BBC’s Sound of 2010 now, but I can talk about the artists who I nominated, since none of them were popular enough to make the list. The longest shot of all three votes was Liz Green, the publicity-shy, Manchester-based singer songwriter has only released two seven inch singles [...]

This post is totally mercenary. I don’t rate Ellie Goulding, and will be deaf to the masses of hype and fluff that’s going to be whizzing about very soon. Neither am I a fan of Midlake, although I’m happy to admit that Roscoe is a great song. You may then think that this post is [...]

A week past Friday I went back to Pure Groove for the fourth lunchtime that week to see I Was a King. The main reason I loved this gig was that after a few scuzzy riffs and harmonies, I was no longer in a cafe bar in Smithfields, London. I was younger, pimplier and worse-dressed, [...]