The first time I heard Leonard Cohen’s music was in Godalming high-street at the turn of the new millennium. A white-haired busker in a Mediterranean shirt and John Lennon glasses was singing “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” to waves of Saturday morning shoppers, who watched their own shoes as they passed by his […]
Honey, lemons and an interview with Ry X
Ry Cuming is pottering around a makeshift backstage at Bristol’s St. Thomas the Martyr church. There’s no tap – (“where do they get the holy water from?”) – practicality, perhaps, a reason why the building hasn’t seen a great many gigs in its lifetime. Regardless, he’s managed to pull together the few ingredients needed for […]
Radio One’s Big Weekend 2016: Five bands you can’t afford to miss – Sunday
You’re here. You’ve sold your soul to another 9am, but this time the rewards were palpable; not quotes on a lecture slide you might skim once for revision purposes, but in the form of a wristband to Europe’s biggest free festival. You’ve been guided through the best of Saturday’s line-up at Big Weekend, but the […]
AlunaGeorge in the Live Lounge, Exeter Phoenix
A man called Wallace has tweeted in saying how incredible this live session is, and Ian from upstairs asks the Radio 1 settlement in Exeter Phoenix to turn he volume up, he can’t hear it. A girl in front of me with silver glitter on her cheeks tells her friend before the show that her […]
Battle of the Bands 2016: Meet the Finalists
The student music event of the year returns to the underground chambers of Cavern tomorrow, where four of the best student bands play it out to be crowned champion of Campus Bands presents Battle of the Bands, 2016. The history books have smiled upon the Exeter scene, here. We’re only talking about Thom Yorke and […]
Ally Pally and the genius of Tame Impala
Kicking off shows with the longest, and definitely one of the standout tracks from last year’s Currents, “Let It Happen” is a bold move – especially when you shower the crowd with confetti on the very first song. But, for Tame Impala, this was just an indication that they were there to party. The bulk […]
Album Review: LNZNDRF – LNZNDRF
LNZNDRF LNZNDRF 19 February 2016; 4AD The introductory notes of “Future You” locate LNZNDRF (pronounced “Lanzendorf”) – the second side-project of members of The National in the last six months – among pulsating Sahara. Orientalism, Arabian Nights… thoughtless synecdoches are kept under wraps and torn apart. The strong riff that follows launches the album as […]
The same old chestnut: An interview with This is the Kit
You released your third album Bashed Out earlier this year, what influences did you take into recording? Oh I’m not sure really. I went into the studio with very much the bare bones of the songs. There was a couple of songs that I’d been playing for a while live but the others took on their own […]
In retrospect: David Bowie’s ★
When Bowie covered Ronnie Spector’s ‘Try Some, Buy Some’ on 2003’s Reality, he simultaneously traversed his own mythology and the Wall of Sound fabled by Ronnie’s late husband. His fixation with texturing often incredibly dense and provocative instrumentation continued over a ten year synapse to The Next Day, to be been lucidly resurrected again in […]
In conversation with Shearwater
Jonathan Meiburg is speaking to me from an apartment in New York City – a surreal place, he says, made all the more strange by the beating anticipation that his new album is released on Sub Pop within the next two weeks. He is the innovation behind Shearwater, a band whose respect and enthralment for […]