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Live Review: Summer Camp at London’s Heaven (11/27)
I’m in Heaven. Decked out in white suits, the husband and wife team of Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey that makes up Summer Camp seemed suitably attired for a gig at the pearly gates. Sparkling...
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Album Review: Pet Shop Boys – Elysium
Elysium, the new album from Pet Shop Boys, maintains the British duo’s tradition of single-word album titles. A similar economic approach flows through this precise and neatly packaged 12-song...
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Album Review: Beth Orton – Sugaring Season
It’s said a change is as good as a rest. In the case of Beth Orton, whose latest release, Sugaring Season, comes after a six-year hiatus, a rest is as good as a change. Since breaking through with her...
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Album Review: Sky Ferreira – Ghost EP
Will the real Sky Ferreira step forward. The precocious 20-year old has been making music since her teens, with some early mentoring by Michael Jackson no less. Her second EP, Ghost, is a five-track...
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Album Review: Andy Burrows – Company
Andy Burrows may be better known as the ex-drummer of Razorlight and current seat holder with We Are Scientists, but he represents an altogether more unusual animal, the singer-songwriter drummer....
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Live Review: Bat For Lashes at Londons HMV Forum (10/29)
The yawning spaces of North London’s HMV Forum quickly filled with devotees for the first of two sell-out shows by Bat For Lashes, currently touring the UK on the back of their latest album, The...
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Album Review: Tracey Thorn – Tinsel and Lights
A Christmas album seems quite unlikely for someone whose past suggests she’s not one to oil the wheels of capitalism. Nonetheless, Everything But the Girl’s Tracey Thorn’s Tinsel and Lights is just...
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Album Review: Kodaline – The Kodaline EP
The cover to the debut EP by Dublin four-piece Kodaline depicts sunlight bursting through a tangle of twisted woodland. Think of the Monty Python “Oscar Wilde” sketch, during which the then Prince of...
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Live Review: Ingrid Michaelson at Londons Union Chapel (11/8)
If the audience crammed into North London’s audio jewel, the Union Chapel, were blown away by Ingrid Michaelson’s performance, then the feeling was pretty mutual. The artist was at pains to thank the...
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Live Review: Mad Dog Mcrea and Cosmo Jarvis at Londons Jazz Cafe (11/22)
The Jazz Cafe is a curious venue on the gentrified southern edge of Camden Town, North London. The venue was originally a bank — which may explain the bar prices. When it became a live jazz venue, it...
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Album Review: Blue Kid – Upright, Love
After a smattering of EP and single releases over the past three years, Upright, Love signals the full-length debut of New York-based five-piece, Blue Kid. Lead singer Lydia Benecke has almost tattooed...
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Live Review: Kodaline at Londons Sebright Arms (11/28)
On Wednesday night, a hundred souls packed into the cosy, compact basement of the Sebright Arms, set in an anonymous East London back street to catch current buzz band, Kodaline. The night before the...
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Live Review: Beth Orton at Londons Union Chapel (12/5)
As impressive aurally and visually as it is, the Union Chapel can still be a daunting stage even for a seasoned performer. For an artist returning to tour her first album in six years without the...
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Live Review: Revere at Londons Hoxton Square (12/18)
On the face of it, the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen may not sound like the place to host your band’s Christmas show but its culinary reference is apt as Tuesday night’s fare offered a feast of...
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Album Review: Broadcast – Berberian Sound Studio
I’ve never been wholly convinced that film soundtracks work outside their celluloid existence. Broadcast’s soundtrack to Peter Strickland’s art-house psycho-thriller, Berberian Sound Studio, though...
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Album Review: Midnight Spin – Dont Let Me Sleep
Sometimes the album title threatens to say it all. In the case of NYC quintet, Midnight Spin, the full-pelt opener to Don’t Let Me Sleep suggests you won’t need to reach for an energy drink to stay out...
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Album Review: Richard Thompson – Electric
Peek at the prismatic cover art of veteran songwriter-guitarist Richard Thompson’s new album Electric and you might expect some fretboard fireworks. “Stony Ground” begins in a flurry of syncopated...
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Album Review: Veronica Falls – Waiting For Something To Happen
A second album called Waiting For Something To Happen might be asking for trouble. Thankfully, second-album syndrome has bypassed the London four-piece Veronica Falls. On the latest collection, the...
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Album Review: Various Artists – Son of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea...
Those familiar with the first Rogue’s Gallery issued back in 2006 might approach news of a follow-up collection, Son of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys, with a mixture of...
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Live Review: Richard Thompson at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London (2/25)
Clad all in black with small splashes of colour provided by abstract figures on his shirt and neck-scarf and wearing his trademark black beret, Richard Thompson took the stage like a veteran son of...
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Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition: 8,000 acts. One big gig.
When did you last listen to 200 songs and then have to list your top three, taking time and trouble because reputations and even careers are at stake? Last month, Consequence of Sound’s Tony Hardy...
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Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition: And then there were eight!
Consequence of Sound’s Tony Hardy was one of 40 UK based writers engaged by Glastonbury Festival to select a long list of 120 artists from over 8,000 entries to the 2013 Glastonbury Emerging Talent...
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Album Review: Reverend and The Makers – @Reverend_Makers
Calling your new album by your Twitter handle might suggest desperate self-publicity. Though in the case of UK five-piece Reverend and The Makers it signifies a nonchalant recognition of the modern...
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Album Review: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – English Electric
English Electric was a British engineering company whose origins predate those of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark by 60 years. Chosen as the title for OMD’s second comeback album, following on from...
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Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition: The Finals
If you like your village halls, you’d fall in love with this one. The generously equipped Old Pilton Working Men’s Club & Village Hall, to give it its full billing, was hosting the finals of the...
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Album Review: Alessis Ark – The Still Life
Alessi’s Ark, the vessel for singer-songwriter Alessi Laurent-Marke’s precocious talent, now has a third studio album with the release of The Still Life. The blossoming West London artist has yet to...
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Album Review: Salt Cathedral – Salt Cathedral EP
When a band’s personnel span two distinct continents, it tends to set up certain expectations. A fusion of backgrounds and culture leads to a blend of musical styles that invariably spells originality....
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Album Review: Daughter – If You Leave
London singer-guitarist Elena Tonra, or Daughter, likes her single word song titles. There are 10 of them on her debut album, If You Leave, and the economy she brings to labeling is a reflection of the...
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Album Review: Big Tent and The Gypsy Lantern – Richest Man Today
What’s in a name? Birmingham, UK four-piece Big Tent and The Gypsy Lantern conjures up images from the circus to a Romany campfire. However you read the moniker, the band’s self-released debut, Richest...
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Live Review: OMD at London’s The Roundhouse (5/3)
As London venues go, The Roundhouse is pretty iconic. Once a Victorian repair shed for steam engines, this elegant industrial building now functions as a thriving multimedia arts venue and provides a...
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Album Review: Dear Georgiana – Dear Georgiana
If you’re in the market for a summer music crush, look no further than Alabama-born songstress Lauren Balthrop, here in the guise of Dear Georgiana. After stints with the New York throwback girl-trio...
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Album Review: Yellowbirds – Songs from the Vanished Frontier
Yellowbirds, once the solo vehicle of Sunshine Apollo’s Sam Cohen, has developed into a fully-fledged band with the sophomore release, Songs From The Vanished Frontier. As songwriter, singer, and...
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Album Review: Ralfe Band – Son Be Wise
Following its offbeat 2010 film soundtrack for Bunny And The Bull, the eccentric Ralfe Band return with a characteristically intriguing and unclassifiable recording, Son Be Wise. Main man Oly Ralfe...
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Album Review: John Fogerty – Wrote A Song For Everyone
Released on John Fogerty’s 68th birthday, Wrote A Song For Everyone is a fresh spin on a dozen tunes from the Californian’s Creedence Clearwater Revival and solo days, plus two new tracks. Fogerty...
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Album Review: Kodaline – In A Perfect World
In A Perfect World marks the full debut of young Irish four-piece, Kodaline. The band has been busy building a solid next-big-thing reputation on the back of EPs, live gigs, and sizeable YouTube hits....
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The Top 20 Highlights of Glastonbury 2013
Glastonbury is about what you make it. There is the potential for every person’s experience to be different, even unique. Firstly, it’s not simply a music festival. Glastonbury is like a series of...
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Album Review: Rose Windows – The Sun Dogs
The Seattle collective Rose Windows throws back to days when the hippie trail led east and mysticism became entwined with the natural order of things. That said, the septet’s sprawling debut, The Sun...
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Album Review: Bell X1 – Chop Chop
Though active since 2000 and back with its sixth album, Chop Chop, I’d not heard much of Irish triumvirate Bell X1 before, so the temptation to read X1 as 11 put me in mind of cricket. Bell X1 in fact...
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Fifteen More Acts That Need to Tour America
Don’t get us wrong; we know the difficulties surrounding the logistics involved in touring the United States, especially when the artist or band in question’s from overseas. Or worse, foreign and...
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Album Review: Pet Shop Boys – Electric
After the calm of Elysium comes the storm of Electric. The second album in 10 months from Pet Shop Boys couldn’t be more different to its predecessor. While Elysium contemplated aging, love, and death...
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Live Review: Pale Seas at London’s Hoxton Hall (7/24)
Like many buildings used for arts and music in London, Hoxton Hall has a colorful past, at one time or other a music hall, Quaker mission, WW2 air raid shelter, theatre, and youth arts centre. Tonight...
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Album Review: The Civil Wars – The Civil Wars
The cover art to The Civil Wars’ self-titled sophomore album depicts a vast, billowing plume of black smoke, suggestive, perhaps, of a smoldering relationship that eventually ignited and left some...
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Album Review: Glen Campbell – See You There
Anyone with a family member or close friend suffering with Alzheimer’s disease in their twilight years can do nothing but applaud See You There, Glen Campbell’s reinterpretation of some of his classic...
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Album Review: Annie – A&R EP
In most music circles, A&R stands for “artists and repertoire”: talent scouts for record labels. In the late ’70s they would stick out like sore thumbs at punk gigs. They were the ones carrying...
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Album Review: Laura Veirs – Warp & Weft
Warp & Weft was conceived while Portland, Oregon-based singer-songwriter Laura Veirs was pregnant with her second child. The ninth studio album in a productive career sees Veirs juggling the...
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Album Review: Sting – The Last Ship
When you achieve a certain stature in music, it comes with full permission to indulge. Sting’s The Last Ship, his first album of original material in 10 years, is a curious indulgence, focusing on the...
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Album Review: Summer Camp – Summer Camp
With this eponymous release, Summer Camp sidesteps one pitfall of the second album by swapping fiction for something more real and closer to home. The debut LP from the UK duo of Elizabeth Sankey and...
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Live Review: Bridie Jackson and The Arbour at London’s The Islington (10/30)
If you can overcome the natural misgivings that arise when you find a venue’s website is its Facebook page, then The Islington is a pleasant place to catch some live music. It’s a homely North London...
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Album Review: The Daydream Club – Found EP
Dubbed “the English Civil Wars” in some quarters, The Daydream Club open their new fan-funded EP, Found, with hollow, resonant guitar and brisk percussion that reinforce that comparison. What the duo...
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Live Review: Laura Veirs at London’s Islington Assembly Hall (11/21)
Anyone familiar with the writings of Douglas Adams will have clocked Upper Street, Islington as the key London location of Arthur Dent when not traversing far-flung galaxies with his chums. The street...
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