The Singles… Kirstie McCrum on Belleruche, Holy Ghost!, The Lines and THe Magic Numbers

Feeling like summer’s on its way out? Don’t despair yet, the radio’s keeping the dream alive for a month or so longer with lovelies like the new single from Belleruche. Clockwatching is a finger-picking slice of female-fronted tunesmithery from the Brighton three-piece. With a distinctly Roisin Murphy vocal, singer Kathrin DeBoer smooches her way through some delicious sophisti-pop. ‘I’m back in the backseat’, she smoulders, and a nation swoons. Overall lacking in genuine heft, Clockwatching is nevertheless a pleasant distraction from the turning of the leaves and as a forerunner to October’s album release 270 Stories, it’s a pretty promising one. … Continue Reading

Singles of the week: featuring Gorillaz, Lee Ryan AND MORE

Gorillaz - Superfast Jellyfish

The world of the single is a curious one. For some bands, the only difference week to week seems to be the track name – the song quite literally remains the same. To that end, Gorillaz have unleashed the new wave of their anti-charm offensive, in the form of ‘Superfast Jellyfish’. Like ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’, it is one of those titles that makes you turn to the sky askance, but within the satiny folds of its three plus minutes, the band’s trademark sound makes a welcome return, the refrain of “Superfast jellyfish” repeating to fade – formulaic but addictive. … Continue Reading

Allo, Darlin’ – The Polaroid Song

'Allo Darlin'

There’s a special place in every girl’s heart for twee pop. The Cardigans doing ‘Carnival’, Belle and Sebastian doing, well, any of their songs – it’s enough to make any red-blooded chick wear Hello Kitty slides in their fringe, get a uke and wear their boyfriend’s ratty brown cardigan.

… Continue Reading

Robbie Williams – Reality Killed The Video Star

Robbie Williams

Post-Take That, Robbie Williams was a renaissance in motion. Drinking, smoking and actually living after so many years in boyband servitude, his spirit was released and his nascent music career sputtered to life.

… Continue Reading

Lou Barlow – Goodnight Unknown

Lou Barlow

Lou Barlow may sound like he’s giving lo-fi a crack at a mid-Western open mic night, but make no mistake, friend – he is the granddaddy of them all.

… Continue Reading

David Cronenburg’s Wife – Hypnagogues

David Cronenburg's Wife

As you would expect of a band who use the identity of another (the real David Cronenburg’s wife is cinematographer Carolyn Zeifman), David Cronenburg’s Wife are a little bit schizophrenic donning many masks throughout Hypnagogues. They appear to make sport of taking on other sounds, making off with other bands’ influences and turning it to their own wicked musical ends.

… Continue Reading

Johnny Foreigner – Criminals

Johnny Foreigner

Where do musical greats come from? The Smiths were straight outta Salford, all working-class woes and Manc miserabilism. Radiohead made the trek into rock’s back pages from Oxford, with the attendant intellect that that entails. But what of Johnny Foreigner?

… Continue Reading

Euros Childs – Son Of Euro Child

Son Of Euro Child - Euros Childs

The new solo album from warbling Welsh oddball Euros Childs is probably already in your record collection – it’s been on sale at recent E.C. gigs for a measly £10 and it’s even available free of charge from the official Euros website.

For the unencumbered and, well, the uninitiated, a small digest of its contents may help.

Best known as the voice – and, let’s face it, heart – of 1990s indie wunderkinds Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Euros is a multi-instru-mentalist with a nice line in Welsh language tunage.

Son Of Euro Child makes this young chap’s fifth solo record, and is easily the most accessible to date. It’s easy when you hit your 30-something stride, it seems. But for all his newfound maturity, from the opening jolly ‘Shithausen’, it’s clear that E.C. is in his best childlike form, all giddy rhythms and entrancing organ wrapped around deliciously sweet vocals. … Continue Reading

Modern Skirts – All Of Us In Our Night

Modern Skirts - All Of Us In Our Night

Launching a new business is the dream of hundreds of thousands across the globe.

As any fule kno, and as Sirallun would attest, the most important measure of any new business is to isolate a gap in the market and squeeze yourself into that niche. That way, you become that “thing” that so many people thought they couldn’t live without but couldn’t quite verbalise.

Sadly, there is no such stringency around the forming of a band. You can pretty much make any old noise and there’s airplay offered, because that’s what individual “taste” is about. Good news for Modern Skirts.

All Of Us In Our Night is their second studio album and the Athens, Georgia four-piece are awash with confidence and swagger throughout. Opener ‘Chanel’, starts up like Lee Marvin before kicking into a strummy American college rock paean to heroin “chic”  featuring the line: “Cover up your tracks with a cardigan”.

The driving drums here hold the whole thing together, but the vocals fall on  the wimpy side of rock. ‘Soft Pedals’ is tuneful and inoffensive, but the wistfulness of the meandering vocal starts to grate, all outsider posturing and musical wallpaper.

The high point musically is ‘Astronauts’, a melodic ‘I’m Only Sleeping’-style chugger, all stripped back guitars and vocal, before easing its way into a dainty-played pop suite of choral singing and listless wonderings: “I miss you, hope you stay”, the refrain goes, before the drums pick up a mere 2 minutes 9 seconds in, and a spin around a Beatles-esque musical world is the reward for the faithful.

Throughout All Of Us In Our Night, Modern Skirts are trying their hardest to woo. From the radio-friendly pop of ‘Eveready’ to the veritable lyrical nonsense of ‘Conversational’, this is best face forward, all “this is what you want” temptation.

But, even with the involvement of R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, there is something missing – some soul or heart, something real that Modern Skirts are offering above and beyond the usual. The best you can say about All Of Us In Our Night is the poppiness of tracks like ‘Motorcade’ – style over substance, but singalong enough for commercial FM.

Good news for Modern Skirts. Bad news for fans of good music.

Eugene McGuinness – Wendy Wonders

Eugene McGuinness - Wendy Wonders

Leytonstone’s chief troubadour is back with more wryly observed pith and middle England melancholia than you can shake a stick at.

… Continue Reading