Archive For The “alt.rock” Category
The coolest man in pop, no question. This picks up where DeeLite fell down, mixing irresistibly snarky pop with a slightly surreal dancefloor sensibility. Created by TV on The Radio’s David Sitek, the album grooves like a dalek on vaseline. Cover of the year too
When Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his band came howling out of LA in 1981 with this infernal brew of voodoo, punk and blues, the die was cast for others to imitate. The pounding drums and voodoo imagery fired live performances that were shamanistic in their intensity. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was the real deal, a musician 
Interpol, as incisive as surgery, display the fearsome grasp of rock dynamics that place them head and shoulders above a host of post punk pretenders. This, their fourth album has seen them simultaneously embrace a wider palette and lose their bass player – who, apparently, had grown to hate the bass. It is to be 
Eighties icon in punctuation jape! Another immaculate collection from rock’s most literate songwriter. Lloyd Cole writes songs that sound so natural they might have been plucked out of the air. This collection, backed by a band featuring Fred Maher, Blair Cowan from the Commotions and Joan ‘As Police Woman’ Wasser, is the strongest in a 
The band that put the gorgeous in Goth. Astoundingly beautiful in places, this album awakened a hitherto uncaring world to the pleasures housed by the 4AD label. Featuring members of the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Colourbox and Modern English performing songs by some truly great songwriters including the then unfashionable Alex Chilton, Roy Harper 
How can you not love Eels? The final episode of a frankly uneven trilogy sees Mark E returning to a mode that if not exactly sprightly, recalls a jauntiness last seen to full effect on the awesome Daisies of the Universe. While some tracks retain the melancholy that characterised the first few Eels albums, the 
Beneath this curmudgeonly exterior beats the heart of an unrepentant if slightly ancient, romantic, with a penchant for the kind of grandiloquent nonsense so beloved of our old friends Echo & the Bunnymen. Indeed it was only days ago, that trudging along the Brighton promenade in the relentless drizzle I was torn between roundly cursing 
The most disappointing thing about the new Arcade Fire album is that it is not 1972 and I am no longer a spotty loon pant clad urchin, for this release has been accompanied by as much tremulous anticipation as any release by say King Crimson or god love ‘em, Family. Happily, it is a fine 
A sprawling behemoth of an album, taking chillout into wild and uncharted territories decorated by surf guitars, live drums, pulsing techno and cinematically immense production. Influence spotting, as ever is the game to play and the likes of Sergio Leone, Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch, Bill Laswell, and Cheb i Sabbah jostle for attention in Track 
“I got some John Coltrane on the stereo, baby…” The first paisley underground act to get signed to a major label, Dream Syndicate were the eye catching facet of a movement that included the Long Ryders, Green on Red and the Rain Parade. Where many of these bands channeled the Byrds and the garage sound 
