Liam Mclean is no joke. Not musically, nor when discussing his slick RnB.
READ MOREThere’s almost no doubt that the quintet of roused Australian youngsters that make up Boy & Bear are comprehensively nice.
It’s hard to fathom that British Sea Power now have five albums under their belts.
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Applicants
Escape From Kraken Castle
[Tiger Trap]7/10
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Purveyors of scuzzy synth drenched indie, Applicants dredge influences from colourful surrealist noise rockers Melt-Banana to GameBoy noises and moustachioed African dictators. ‘School Kids In Japan’ explodes in a fluorescent hail of keyboards and erratic bursts of guitars. Like stumbling across your hidden stash of Bis records, ‘Tesco Metro Disco’ is a full-on shot of 90s nostalgia that lives up to its ‘riotous’ tagline while ‘Crash Mat’ smashes into the room like a brawl in a Super Mario game and pitches the band further on a musical collision course. Like Ash when they were still wiry-haired and angry, Applicants know their way around a hook, in their tuneful ditty about the exploits of African Hitler-in-waiting Robert Mugabe particularly. Always tongue in cheek it manages to steer clear of the navel-gazing that blights most indie records, this is scrappy, chaotic and oddly loveable.
By Kate Parkin
Your worst fears about ‘Nothing’ are probably right. The late-year, post-album extended-play sounds like the runoff of a few constructions that didn’t make the cut for ‘Dedication’.
Milagres are a Brooklyn-based quintet fronted by a certain Kyle Wilson, whose soaring vocal style sits somewhere between Thom Yorke and Chris Keating of Yeasayer.
On first encounter, ‘Bad Dream Hotline’ is your standard emo-goth release – black on black cover art, tracks called things like ‘A Handsome Stranger Called Death’ and ‘Dance & Weep’.
‘Out of Sight, Out of Town’ is an album that concerns itself, in the main, with casual sex.
When LA Vampires first released ‘So Unreal’ on a limited vinyl run in 2010 it sold out in a flash, perhaps because of its superbly kitsch artwork by Spencer Longo.
Dan Mangan is a husky-voiced, melancholic Canadian singer-songwriter who does all the things you expect husky-voiced, melancholic Canadian singer-songwriters to do.
Favourite Sons is the most recent project of Ken Griffin, formerly of nineties outfits Rollerskate Skinny and Kid Silver.
Synth enthusiasts must have been veritably jumping with joy of late (would a synth enthusiast do that sort of thing?).
A long lasting member of the American garage rock scene since the late Eighties, Mark Sultan has cooked up a hotpot of a new album.
Some very big noises are being made in the mainstream press over this Swedish duo, and their calculated pop sensibilities go a long way to explaining that.
This week we’ve been listening to new music from The Proper Ornaments, The Weeknd, Electricity In Our Homes, Sunless ’97 and Ceremony [pictured].
LISTEN HEREDropping his iPhone was the best thing that ever happened to Reef Younis.
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