Mastodon - Emperor of Sand (Album Review)

Photo: Jimmy Hubbard To give a face, a name, to something as abhorrent as cancer is a bold move. For Mastodon, who have recently seen friends and family members face the disease, it was essential. Because this band feel everything they do: every nuance, every note, every grain of static on every riff. The heaviness all comes from the heart, as glib and throwaway that may sound. ‘Emperor of Sand’ is Mastodon’s seventh full-length, a concept album about time and mortality and yet another towering release.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Tuesday, 04 April 2017

Me And That Man – Songs Of Love And Death (Album Review)

“Nergal’s doing a country album!” they screamed, taking their Behemoth demo tapes and thrusting them onto the bonfire below an effigy of the man himself.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Friday, 31 March 2017

Soulwax - From Deewee (Album Review)

Photo: Ill-Studio So, who is going to turn up to the party for this new album? Is it Soulwax the indie-guitar band? Or Soulwax the electro-synthpop band?

Written by: Ben Gallivan | Date: Thursday, 30 March 2017

Craig Finn - We All Want The Same Things (Album Review)

After a time, we stop noticing the things that stay the same and focus solely on what’s changed. So, for example, we can see that Craig Finn’s ‘We All Want The Same Things’ is a confident stylistic departure from his early solo work and that the bombast in his delivery has been toned down since the days when the Hold Steady were the world’s best bar band.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Thursday, 30 March 2017

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Damage and Joy (Album Review)

Only a tone-deaf, mainstream-loving sheep could fail to be excited about a new album from the legendary Jesus and Mary Chain. Arriving almost 20 years since the band’s sixth studio LP, ‘Munki’, and a decade since the Reid brothers put aside their rivalry to initially reform, ‘Damage and Joy’ is a welcome return even if it does largely resemble an echo from the past.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Michael Schenker Fest - "Live" Tokyo (Album Review)

Photo: Emili Muraki The most surprising thing about this concert isn’t the fact that reformed wild man Michael Schenker is still alive to celebrate his musical legacy. Nor is it the appearance of three vocalists who enjoyed some interesting experiences fronting the guitarist’s band throughout the 1980s. The biggest shock is that, with Schenker’s immense fretwork posing something of a fire hazard, Tokyo’s International Forum wasn’t evacuated the moment he struck the first note.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Tuesday, 28 March 2017

Creeper - Eternity, In Your Arms (Album Review)

Baby AFI. Meat Loaf meddlers. Fancy dress enthusiasts. Whatever your perception of Creeper currently is, forget it. Seal it in a letter bomb with no address and let it explode in the middle of nowhere. Southampton’s purveyors of purple punk have revealed their true colours on their debut proper, ‘Eternity, In Your Arms’, and it’s not what you thought it was going to be.

Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Tuesday, 28 March 2017

Pulled Apart By Horses - The Haze (Album Review)

Photo: Steve Gullick Pulled Apart By Horses have been at this for a while. Almost a decade into their career, the Leeds rockers have grown confident and comfortable. On ‘The Haze’, their fourth album, they go with their gut. “Fuck everyone else,” is how vocalist and guitarist Tom Hudson put it.

Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Friday, 24 March 2017

Real Estate - In Mind (Album Review)

Photo: Shawn Brackbill It feels as though there’s a new hot take proclaiming that innovation in music is dead every other week at the moment. As contentious as that premise is, though, there’s certainly been a rise in the number of artists using modern technology to look back rather than forward.

Written by: Jonathan Rimmer | Date: Thursday, 23 March 2017

Spoon - Hot Thoughts (Album Review)

Despite having amassed an impressive back catalogue that now runs to nine studio albums, Spoon remain unsung heroes. A lack of radio airplay probably accounts for part of that in the UK, but the amount of critical acclaim afforded to them is considerable. According to the review aggregator site Metacritic, in fact, the Austin band were the best reviewed of the ‘00s.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Thursday, 23 March 2017

Depeche Mode - Spirit (Album Review)

With their tenure as a band now approaching 40 years, Depeche Mode are still undeniably one of the biggest acts on the planet. ‘Spirit’ is their 14th studio effort and arrives following a period of outside experimentation following the release of ‘Delta Machine’ in 2013, during which both Martin Gore (‘MG’) and Dave Gahan (‘Angels & Ghosts’ with Soulsavers) put out records under their own steam.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Wednesday, 22 March 2017

The Shins - Heartworms (Album Review)

For any band that enjoyed a close association with a certain scene or moment in time it can be difficult to separate the ongoing job of making music from fan expectations and the spectre of reviewer snark.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Conor Oberst - Salutations (Album Review)

The band name Bright Eyes inspired immediate mistrust. It conveyed shoe-gazing egotism and a kind of phoney introversion peddled by spoiled suburbanites on college campuses. Maybe that's why Conor Oberst retired the moniker in 2011 and decided to double down on solo albums. ‘Salutations’ is his third since the band split, and his eighth in total.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Navigator (Album Review)

“Now all the politicians, they just squawk their mouths, they said: ‘We’ll build a wall to keep them out.' And all the poets were dying of a silence disease, so it happened quickly and with much ease.” Mounting an artistic resistance against those who seek to trample over basic social liberties, Alynda Segarra and Hurray For The Riff Raff have arrived with one of the most lyrically resonant and musically splendid records of 2017.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Monday, 20 March 2017

Idles - Brutalism (Album Review)

Prior to their debut LP taking shape, Idles’ journey was a slow burn. With two EPs in their back pocket, 2012’s ‘Welcome’ and 2015’s ‘Meat’, they should have been running into it head first, but instead they found themselves stagnant until logistical changes and the passing of vocalist Joe Talbot’s mother led to renewed urgency and ‘Brutalism’ becoming a cathartic release.

Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Thursday, 16 March 2017

Circa Waves - Different Creatures (Album Review)

Circa Waves frontman Kieran Shudall has made it no secret that the band want to see their name at the top of the biggest festival bills. It’s an understandable goal, but if you want to sell millions of albums, play to thousands of people and get those coveted headline slots then you’ve got to come up with the goods.

Written by: Liam Turner | Date: Wednesday, 15 March 2017

Laura Marling - Semper Femina (Album Review)

Is there a better contemporary English folk songwriter than Laura Marling?

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Tuesday, 14 March 2017

Grandaddy - Last Place (Album Review)

Photo: Dan Cronin Apparently, ‘Last Place’ marks the return of Grandaddy after 11 years away. But, if we’re all completely honest with each other, it’s not really been that long as much of the pre-hiatus music released as Grandaddy remains interchangeable with the solo material put out by frontman Jason Lytle in the interim. And, while we’re at it, we can agree that 2006’s ‘Just Like the Fambly Cat’ was also a Lytle solo project, given that the rest of the band had pretty much given up the ghost by then.

Written by: Ben Gallivan | Date: Monday, 13 March 2017

Alison Krauss - Windy City (Album Review)

Whenever Gotham City is in peril, the bat signal is projected into the sky and the caped crusader comes running to save the day. Nashville isn’t exactly a crime-ridden dystopia, but its musical heritage certainly needs rescuing from the gangs of villainous bro-country acts who’ve distorted and devalued the genre. So beam Alison Krauss’s name above the city’s skyline, because the queen of bluegrass is here to rescue us from their evil clutches with the magnificent ‘Windy City’.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Friday, 10 March 2017

Ed Sheeran - ÷ (Album Review)

Ed Sheeran is the immensely likeable prince of pop. A gentle, diligent and very British talent, his warm ordinariness feels so familiar that the whole world has invested in his success. That has continued with the release of his third LP, ‘÷’.

Written by: Milly McMahon | Date: Friday, 10 March 2017