Category: Indie
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How Asylums and South Record Shop Are Making Southend Rock
On a day when that august (and indeed August) celebration of the best albums of the year, the Mercury Prize nominations list, was released, a small part of Southend-on-Sea was showing what a bit of DIY spirit and grit and determination can do. At the start of 2014 Richard and Stephen Onslow decided to open up…
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Parquet Courts – Human Performance at Rough Trade East
It was in the sedate-sounding surroundings of The University of North Texas at a record listening club that one of New York’s noisiest exports was first spawned. Andrew Savage was the host at the grandly titled “Knights of the Round Table” Record Club and there he met Austin Brown, an unassuming fellow music fan, and…
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How Cambridge Punks Inspired The White Stripes. Meet The Fire Dept.
It’s funny what you unearth sometimes in the most unlikely places. I was checking through the list of artists that have recorded “You Left The Water Running” for this series of articles. In between all the R&B stars from Detroit or the Deep South, you know – the Otis Reddings and Wilson Picketts of this…
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Sweet Billy Pilgrim Reveal Brilliant New Songs. Audience Breathes Collective Sigh Of Relief.
Sweet Billy Pilgrim, as regular readers will attest, are a band worthy of much attention, but are – unfathomably – not yet at the stage where stadia and arenas sponsored by phone companies and chewing gum manufacturers are pleading them to play a week-long residency. In response to this lamentable – and hard to…
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Why You Should Hear Drenge’s New Album, Undertow
It’s easy to get complacent sometimes. It starts with a War On Drugs album. It has a bit of guitar, you’re a little uncomfortable that it sounds a lot like that Don Henley record from the eighties or Dire Straits, but you let it go. Then you find yourself tuning in to Absolute Radio. You…
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Why You Should Hear The New Courtney Barnett LP…
2015 looks like being a big year for Australian singer songwriter Courtney Barnett, with her laconic, grungy, stream-of-consciousness style attracting strong reviews with debut album “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit”. Barnett brought a three piece band to Rough Trade last night to launch the album. Barnett has built a good…
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Irrefutable Facts About Two Piece Bands – Plus Hear Two New Songs By Drenge
Adding a third person to a two-piece isn’t always a smooth transition. The day Brad Pitt tentatively sidled up to Jennifer Aniston and suggested that the addition of Angelina Jolie might, in some ways, add to the fun they were already having was probably not his most successful negotiation, although some of us can understand…
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Want To Host A Gig At Your Home? Sweet Billy Pilgrim Can Make It Happen With New Album
The music industry might be on it’s last legs, resembling something that has been dragged backwards through a hedge in a particularly unsavoury part of town, but it isn’t all bad news. If there is a silver lining, it is the increasing opportunities for fans to interact with their favourite musicians. A few years…
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The Best Records of 2015 So Far #3: Natalie Prass
Rock n roll may never die, but there’s a time and a place for the more extreme varieties. Not every wedding party dance floor, to take one example, would find itself filled were a DJ to “drop” Slayer’s “Angel of Death” in between the more traditional fare of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” and S Club 7’s…
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The Best Records of 2015 So Far #2: Ash – Cocoon
Here at ERTAS Towers, the ’96 Dom Perignon* has been rested on ice and the chubbiest of our calves is now looking distinctly regretful about having that extra bag of oats, whilst the other, thinner, calves frolic around the field with gay abandon, keeping the weight off. The reason for all this celebration is that…
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The Best Records of 2015 So Far #1: Asylums
Every now and then I get to hear a new record that really stands out from the crowd and brings me to the sort of heightened state of alert that you would normally only see at the Criminal Records Bureau when a Radio 1 DJ puts in an application to work with the local scout…
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Josh Tillman is a Rock Star: Father John Misty, Live at the Village Underground, East London
Don’t you just love it when you go to a gig that is so much better than you ever expected it would be? Father John Misty played an incredible show at The Village Underground in Shoreditch last night. Even if they weren’t converts before they arrived, everyone in the audience left a believer in…
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Pond Play Rough Trade East to Launch New LP, “Man It Feels Like Space Again”
Pond played live in London today, in a packed Rough Trade East. Where reasons for delaying the start of a gig are concerned, Pond can now claim to be world class. Axl Rose? A mere amateur excuse-maker compared to Pond, whose legendary reason for delaying their Rough Trade East lunchtime show today for an hour…
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Which Is The Best White Stripes Live Album? And How Much Does It Cost?
You don’t need to take out a second mortgage to hear the best White Stripes live shows… The Jack White collectables range is getting ever bigger. In the month that Topps announced the release of a Jack White Baseball Card, White was not slow to release his own tour poster for a show in Fenway…
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The Charlatans Debut Songs From New Album Modern Nature At Rough Trade East
It’s a good thing that Tim Burgess is such a positive, likeable frontman. His band, The Charlatans has experienced great highs, including three number one hit albums, and – whether by design or chance – was an integral part of two important musical scenes in Madchester and Britpop. Songs like 1995’s “Just When You’re Thinking…
Every record tells a story 