Category: Indie
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Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner appears on the new Queens Of The Stone Age album and it would seem he was influenced by them from the sound of the new Monkeys’ song, “Do I Wanna Know?” The guitars on the mid-tempo number sound ever so slightly QOTSA-ish and there’s no denying that the sludge-ish beat of…
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Critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Jann Klose was born in Germany and raised in Hamburg and Kenya, South Africa. He arrived in the United States as an exchange student in Cleveland. It wasn’t long before he was performing in the Cleveland Opera Chorus. He went on to perform in touring productions of such Broadway shows as Jesus…
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These New Puritans have always been rather bizarre and I’m pleased to say that they continue to be so. That said, they’re three albums in now and they’ve yet to make the same album twice. On the contrary, if you played someone all three albums they would never guess that they were all the work…
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Boards Of Canada have always put out fascinating music. While much of it has been relatively mellow, many of their songs being downright ambient, there’s also been a sense of foreboding about many of their compositions. Their long-awaited new album Tomorrow’s Harvest has all of these elements. There are some fairly calm songs, but most…
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Ben Lee’s new album, Ayahuasca: Welcome To The Work, was inspired by an experience he had while tripping on the extremely strong hallucinogenic plant ayahuasca. He’s described the experience as life-changing and he wanted to pay tribute to the plant as a result. If it sounds silly, well, yes I suppose it is a bit…
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Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme’s last project was Them Crooked Vultures, the all-star album he did with Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin). I tried very hard to get into their self-titled album, but it never managed to grip me. The musicianship was top notch, but the songs…
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If you’ve ever wished that Camera Obscura would do away with their catchy hooks and up-tempo tunes then your prayers have been answered. Sort of. Here’s what singer Tracyanne Campbell told The Scotsman about the making of their new album, Desire Lines: “There are a couple of pop songs on the record but I was…
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Spacehog’s last album was 2001’s Hogyssey, a criminally under-rated album. But, then, if you ask me, all of Spacehog’s albums have been criminally under-rated. Their 1995 debut, Resident Alien, sold very well, but it really only spawned one hit, “In The Meantime,” which also happens to be their only U.S. hit ever, so, sadly, they…
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I don’t know why singer (and famous actor) Jared Leto and company decided to spell the word Thirty instead of simply using the number 30 this time around. Perhaps it’s an attempt to put some distance between this and their previous albums? But one wonders why they would do that when their last two albums…
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Music always plays a major role in Baz Luhrmann’s films. The soundtracks for Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge are two of the biggest-selling soundtracks of all time and they are masterpieces. For the soundtrack for his adaptation of The Great Gatsby, he sought out Jay Z and entrusted him to find songs that would…
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It’s hard to get inside my ears; it’s even harder to get inside my brain. If anything I have ever written for Love is Pop consists in pure, unaltered fangasm or clearly a cry for help, sometimes, it feels good to focus on someone with talent, who sends you music just because they can, that…
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The Joy Formidable’s “A Minute’s Silence” was released on vinyl on Record Store Day this year. An exquisite piano ballad, it doesn’t have any percussion or guitars, but it’s easily one of their very best songs to date. The melody is beautiful but melancholic and the piano is rather dark. The song also uses keyboards…
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This might be one of the most anticipated releases of 2013. The National’s sixth studio release is a beacon of what Brooklyn-based indie rock can offer: it features appearances from Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Van Etten and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Following 2010’s highly praised High Violet, Trouble Will Find Me has slowly leaked through…
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Today, Bono turns 52. Today, the world finds out that Jack White’s cover of Love Is Blindness is part of The Great Gatsby’s soundtrack. Today, I need to revisit a few of my basic rules. Achtung Baby is unequivocally one of the most visited and revisited U2 albums, considered a landmark in alternative rock and…
