What Am I Going To Do (With Everything I Know) (2:31)
Seemed True (3:21)
Soft Spoken Man (3:08)
Time (2:53)
Almost Careless (2:12)
Review: Tamara Lindeman was at a real transition point in life when What Am I Going to do With Everything I Know was first unveiled. A six track strong EP, here the moodiness and tangible sense of isolation, loneliness, and hopelessness that had once emanated from her voice dissipates into equally tender and gentile thoughts on an impending marriage and all that may come with it. For some, an equally troubling time in their lives, for others something to truly work towards and - when it finally arrives - celebrate, either way it's a subject ripe for emotional songwriting.
But in actual fact, Lindeman, her fiance and troupe treat the concept of matrimony with something close to apathy, or at least lackadaisical 'might as well'-ness. The culmination of this record, 'Almost Careless', sees her ask the question 'what if', but in a way that's neither excited nor nervous, but simply filled with inquisitiveness and a matter of fact consideration.
Review: Are Working Men's Club the best band to have emerged from northern England in the past decade? We'd say there's a very, very good chance. Catch them live on stage and Sydney Minsky-Sargeant, Liam Ogburn, Hannah Cobb and Mairead O'Connor are utterly captivating, and their combination of post punk, rock, electronica, and acid house transfers very well onto record too. Their DJ sets, for which 'Syd' leads the charge, are also nothing short of quality. Informed by genre-less masters such as Andrew Weatherall, Ivan Smagghe and Erol Alkan, as this latest Megamix goes to show, the idea is to create these deeply immersive cosmic soundscapes that aim directly for the dance floor, taking phrases and sounds from their songs, reworking, rethinking and rearranging them into something fresh and high energy. Impossible not to make an impact.
Review: It could have all been so different when you think about it. One of the UK's most critically acclaimed, celebrated and mourned bands, Joy Division, were originally toying with the idea of calling themselves Stiff Kittens after first getting together. This then changed to Warsaw, after David Bowie's track, 'Warsawa', and it's under this guise they broke into the common conscious, supporting The Buzzcocks, Penetration and John Cooper Clarke at Electric Circus in 1977. Reviews from that show - by music journalist leg-ends Paul Morley and Ian Wood - would ignite the hype. A debut album was planned for RCA Records, 11 tracks that would go on to be known simply as The RCA Sessions. Here they are now, as originally intended, some of which eventually made it onto Joy Division records, others didn't, but all clearly showing musicians defining their sound and place in the scene.
Review: There's a hushed wind blowing through the debut album from London songwriter Will Westerman, but that shouldn't be taken to mean the tracks lack big ideas. Ideas that, thankfully, the young artist seems more than capable of realising with dazzling art rock and pop strokes, making those references to Peter Gabriel in the promo material perfectly understandable. Only time will tell, but on first impact this is exactly the kind of polished but politically charged stuff we need in the world today. Easy to hear but resolute in its determination to consider new possibilities, playing with tempos, times and traditional arrangements to ensure the slow jams, alt-ballads and synth-fuelled serenades are infinitely re-playable and remarkably memorable pre-requisites for any long-lasting success story. One for your list, for sure.
Review: Let's face it, Jack White has never really stood still, with the stream of solo projects put out since The White Stripes days proof of just how relentless his creative spark is. However, as many have pointed out in reviews of Fear of the Dawn, there's not been that much of a stylistic shift since his joint venture with Meg. As such prepare to be blown away with this latest effort. Although we're not going to say whether that's in a good or bad way.
To call the tracks here obscure is nothing short of horribly reductive. A strange, at time obnoxious and jarring fusion of blues, theatrical rock, prog, and plain weird, it's nothing if not consistently unexpected, and wholly unique. Often huge in sound, but then occasionally minimalistic, it's the noise made by a man who has always threatened to throw the kitchen sink at fans, and has finally found the muscle to do it.
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There's absolutely no doubt in our mind Blue Weekend is a record Wolf Alice feel a sense of enormous personal satisfaction from. Of course time will tell if it can bag them another Top 5 position, or even a Mercury Prize nomination, but for all intents and purposes there's a real feeling of catharsis here. And it goes well beyond famously reserved singer Ellie Rowsell telling listeners she doesn't give a fuck if they like her.
The band's latest punches, bangs and has absolutely no time for dishonestly. In many ways, this is where they are fully realising influences that have always been present - grunge, punk, some of that 1990s British indie-garage-with-bite crossover stuff. But it's also a record that sees them realising just where they've got to, and now reaching for a louder and more prominent position on the main stage.
Review: 25 years have now passed since Liverpool legend Pete Wylie and his long-term backing band released Songs of Strength & Heartbreak, which marked the post-punk era combo's return to action after 16 long years. Something of a triumphant return, the set flits between raucous punk energy ('Never Loved as a Child'), Oasis-ish riffs on mid-late period Beatles ('Sing All The Saddest Songs', 'Disneyland Forever'), riff-heavy post-Britpop indie-rock ('I Still Love You', post-punk headiness ('Loverboy') and all manner of orchestrated, reach-for-the-ceiling sing-alongs ('Hey! Mona Lisa'). To mark the album's birthday, Chrysalis has served up this expanded 'deluxe' edition. Unusually, this time round CD1 boasts the album as it was originally demo'd and produced in 1998 - including a slew of songs that were subsequently shelved - with the 'released' version (2000) nestled on CD2.
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