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Tuff Love - Resort (Album Review)
‘Resort’ is a handy guide to the early workings of Tuff Love, merging the Scottish duo’s three EPs - ‘Junk’, ‘Dross’ and ‘Dregs’ - into a whole. Unfortunately, the joins are far from seamless. Though the clusters of tracks have their charms, the compilation doesn’t work as a cohesive piece and, despite the chopping and changing, suffers from a bad case of monotony.
Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Friday, 05 February 2016
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Rihanna - Anti (Album Review)
‘Anti’ has been a long time coming. You know that. You probably read one, two, 10, 20 or 30 of the thousands of speculative articles penned about its long gestation. You watched the Bitch Better Have My Money video and read the accompanying thinkpieces. You tabled Rihanna x Kanye x Paul McCartney as a potential listening option and your brain responded with a tepid maybe. The reaction at large to an unprecedented lack of activity from one of the world’s genuine stars was an exercise in plugging gaps.
Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Friday, 05 February 2016
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Sia - This Is Acting (Album Review)
Sia’s ‘This Is Acting’ is a dose of pure modern pop and, as might be expected, it hits many of the current successful chart notes. There are plenty of big power ballads, such as Alive, One Million Bullets and Bird Set Free, but here there's also an opportunity to experiment with other styles.
Written by: Jennifer Geddes | Date: Thursday, 04 February 2016
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Daughter - Not To Disappear (Album Review)
It's not uncommon for those bands able to conjure rich textures to also be somewhat melodically deficient. It is, after all, very difficult to build a world from the ground up while also keeping things snappy. Daughter are not entirely immune to the issue, but never do they get entirely carried away and ditch the songs altogether.
Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 03 February 2016
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Danny Bryant - Blood Money (Album Review)
Photo: TX63 Music Photography
Danny Bryant has long been a wonderfully expressive guitarist, but his songwriting and singing haven't always matched the calibre of that sumptuous fretwork. Until now. 'Blood Money', the ninth album of his career, finds him in the form of his life. His all round game is mightily impressive on a record he describes as his “most bluesy” to date.
Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Tuesday, 02 February 2016
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Bloc Party - Hymns (Album Review)
‘Hymns’, Bloc Party’s fifth long player, is their first release since 'The Nextwave Sessions' almost three years ago, but tellingly it’s also the first without bassist Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong behind the kit.
Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Friday, 29 January 2016
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Conrad Keely - Original Machines (Album Review)
To call ‘Original Machines’ a solo album would be to do it an injustice. With a 24-strong tracklisting, and clocking in at just under an hour, it would be more fitting to view it as Conrad Keely’s opus. Those expecting a regurgitation of ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’s go-to moves should step away now, as this is a standalone piece of work.
Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Thursday, 28 January 2016
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Wet - Don't You (Album Review)
It’s fascinating to examine the influence that post-digital thinking has had on modern music. We increasingly find ourselves in a landscape where technology is used to transmit the most powerful human emotions and Brooklyn pop trio Wet are a good example of the phenomenon. Their debut album, ‘Don’t You’, feels like a drawn-out song cycle that’s fixated on conveying one mood very distinctly – that of intimacy.
Written by: Jonathan Rimmer | Date: Tuesday, 26 January 2016
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Savages - Adore Life (Album Review)
To their credit, the London-based noisemongers Savages delivered on their early promise, and huge hype, when their debut ‘Silence Yourself’ broke in 2013. Blending goth flourishes with the icy guitars of post-punk, tribal drums and wailing vocals, they bore more than a passing resemblance to an updated Siouxsie And The Banshees; their sound coalescing into an album of exhilarating aggression.
Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Tuesday, 26 January 2016
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Abbath - Abbath (Album Review)
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but Abbath’s been working his corpsepainted arse off and the result is far from a bore. Despite exiting Immortal in messy circumstances - and amid claims from his former bandmates that he’d been “ruining the band’s progress for a very long time” - the Norwegian man-meme has retaliated with an album that is, well, better than anything Immortal have released since ‘At The Heart Of Winter’.
Written by: Alec Chillingworth | Date: Monday, 25 January 2016
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Suede - 'Night Thoughts' (Album Review)
“We needed to make a Suede record,” Brett Anderson mused in an interview with Under The Radar around the release of the band’s surprise comeback album, ‘Bloodsports’, in 2013, revealing that long-term producer Ed Buller had persuaded them to ditch plans to rip up their established template.
Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Wednesday, 20 January 2016
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The Temperance Movement - White Bear (Album Review)
Let's not mince words. 'White Bear' is the sound of hot-shot rockers the Temperance Movement looking ‘the difficult second album' up and down before smashing it to smithereens in a frenzied orgy of flying baseball bats. They have returned with supersized confidence, ambition and swagger and, if rock ‘n' roll really was in mortal peril, this would be its elixir.
Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Monday, 18 January 2016
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Panic! At The Disco - Death Of A Bachelor (Album Review)
‘Death Of A Bachelor’ may arrive under the Panic! At The Disco banner, but it’s really the solo masterpiece of mastermind Brendon Urie, who played every instrument on the album. It is a lesson in pop-rock brilliance and, in all honesty, it’s hard not to gush about it. It’s that good.
Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Thursday, 14 January 2016
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David Bowie - Blackstar (Album Review)
He could wrong foot us to the last. ‘Blackstar’, an album that seemingly hinted at infinite future possibilities, was in fact a long goodbye. David Bowie went out as he came in: unique, fearless and able to speak to each of us as though we were the ones who really mattered.
Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 12 January 2016
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Hinds - Leave Me Alone (Album Review)
Hinds’ debut album manages to capture the feeling of both the party and the aftermath. Its songs detail late nights spent drinking beer and flirting with boys just as they pick over the next day’s hangover and accompanying emotional turmoil.
Written by: Jennifer Geddes | Date: Monday, 11 January 2016
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Pusha T - King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude (Album Review)
Pusha T’s ‘King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude’ is a record by a rapper with any bell or whistle he might desire to hand, but one where hard-nosed brevity is preferred in order to make the most of some fascinating constituent parts. There’s much to be said for knowing what you want to do and yet more for going out there and executing it.
Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Monday, 04 January 2016
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Baroness - 'Purple' (Album Review)
Photo: Jimmy Hubbard
Discussions of Baroness records will be split across a pre and post-bus accident divide from now on. ‘Purple’ is the band’s first recorded statement since the crash, which occurred in 2012 as they toured the UK following the release of the sprawling, brilliant ‘Yellow & Green’, and offers a prismatic reading of it. This is an album informed by its context out of a cathartic necessity, but not one constrained by it.
Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 22 December 2015
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Jennylee - Right On! (Album Review)
‘Right On!’ is the solo debut from Warpaint bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg and, although it features soundscapes that could form part of her day job, it falls some way short of being cut from the same cloth. At best it might patch the Warpaint-shaped hole that’s grown since they released their self-titled sophomore LP nearly two years ago.
Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Friday, 18 December 2015
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Coldplay - A Head Full Of Dreams (Album Review)
Contrary to the patterns of their career to date, Coldplay’s seventh album, ‘A Head Full Of Dreams’, arrives after a much shorter interlude than usual, following up last year’s ‘Ghost Stories’. It represents a lighter, more uplifting side to the band’s sound, being generally based around Chris Martin moving on from his “conscious uncoupling” from Gwyneth Paltrow.
Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Thursday, 10 December 2015
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