Archive For The “alternative” Category
No question here, album of the year has to be ‘High Violet’ by The National. Absolutely stunning and it has to be said, streets ahead of the competition. This was the year The National really delivered. A league of their own. The next nine, reviewed elsewhere in these pages… 2. Tindersticks – Falling Down A [...]
The best songs sound as though they were discovered rather than contrived, and in ‘Cattle and Cane’ the Go-Between’s Grant McLennan gave us one of the truly brilliant songs of the early eighties. Quite unlike anything else from the period, this is catchy, quirky and lyrical. A wonderfully evocative snapshot; infused with melancholy, looking forward, [...]
There were only two bands worth listening to in the Britpop movement and neither of them were called Oasis. This album transcends the genre effortlessly, providing the definitive soundtrack to a generation for whom the alienation of the after party comedown became a lifestyle. Bernard Butler, a guitarist and arranger of prodigious talent and singer 
“The road to the Western Lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world for it is a journey beyond death…” William Burroughs Starting life as an avant-dance collective, by 1987 Bill Laswell’s Material epitomised a culture in fast forward, popular music eating itself. Fusion has never been so thoroughly realised as on 
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
“The godlike genius of Johnny Halliday” is not a phrase that is likely to be heard too often in these parts. Putting to one side the noodlings of Gong, whilst savouring the Breton phrasings of Alan Stivell, it has to be said that with the exception of the occasional chanteuse, France’s contribution to alternative music 
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 
Preposterous, pretentious, preening perfection. In a short career, Bauhaus defined the mood and the look of a generation and delivered some of the most edgy rock music ever recorded. Mixing glam, high art, literary and film allusion with gleeful disdain, they invented Goth and left their many hapless imitators choking in their dust. This album 
