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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Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Before Today
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Ariel ‘Pink’ Rosenberg is back, again, with his twelfth studio album and he’s brought the ghoulish group of Haunted Graffiti with him. Sticking to his freak-folk roots, this Angeleno has recorded and produced (with a little help from Sunny Levine) himself an indie-folk album slathered in retro quirks and funky bass lines. With the amount of synthesized organ there is here it’s like a medley of adverts from the seventies. When the ethereal mixed harmonies of ‘Round and Round’ kick in they could be promoting a new detergent before cutting to the seedy cop show on next, which ‘Beverly Kills’ provides the intro for as sirens blare over a ‘Thriller’-tinted brassy synth and character voiceovers overlap each other. ‘Butt-House Blondies’ provides the glam-rock with swirling guitars and the fuzz whacked up, while ‘Menopause Man’ slows right down, takes a simple walking bass line and Pink’s melancholy vocals growl over the top. It’s a real pic’n’mix that gets the tongue frothing to try all the flavours of ‘Before Today’.
By D. K. Goldstein
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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