Reviews
June 2014
2nd June
Album Review
2 Stars
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Only Run
While not unpleasant, there’s little to warrant enduring revisits.
Album Review
2 Stars
Clean Bandit - New Eyes
The band’s genre-splicing potential is lost on a largely tedious debut.
Album Review
4 Stars
Fucked Up - Glass Boys
At heart Fucked Up are still very much a hardcore band.
Album Review
4 Stars
Hamilton Leithauser - Black Hours
Re-energised, ready to take on the world.
Album Review
3 Stars
Howling Bells - Heartstrings
Another smooth and satisfying affair.
Album Review
2 Stars
Kyla La Grange - Cut Your Teeth
An album that’s trying different things; not all of them work, but it makes for an interesting listen all the same.
Album Review
4 Stars
Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal
A triumphant slap in the face to all the slacker-taggers.
Album Review
4 Stars
PAWS - Youth Culture Forever
It’s youthful in its exuberance, but as we all remember, youth culture isn’t always that happy.
EP Review
4 Stars
TĀLĀ - The Duchess
London producer of Iranian descent defies location on her ear-splitting debut.
Album Review
3 Stars
The Heartbreaks - We May Yet Stand A Chance
There’s a nagging desire throughout for a return to the zest and zeal of their debut.
Album Review
4 Stars
The Orwells - Disgraceland
The Orwells have got this thing down.
Album Review
4 Stars
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Days Of Abandon
They’re revisiting their bedroom pop roots and letting them soar to dizzying new heights.
Album Review
3 Stars
The Phantom Band - Strange Friend
An enchantingly pleasing record.
9th June
Album Review
2 Stars
Alexis Taylor - Await Barbarians
Little more than an indulgent side-project.
Album Review
4 Stars
clipping. - CLPPNG
The thing that makes ‘CLPPNG’ so appealing isn’t how it subverts norms; it’s how it embraces them.
Album Review
4 Stars
Dub Thompson - 9 Songs
A record replete with droning psychedelia, an infectious energy and a sinister, carnivalesque feel.
Album Review
4 Stars
First Aid Kit - Stay Gold
Big-hearted songs that breeze straight past bummed out despondency.
Album Review
4 Stars
Glass Animals - ZABA
An often scintillating debut.
Album Review
4 Stars
Jack White - Lazaretto
It shouldn’t be a Jack White record. And yet it couldn’t be anything but.
Album Review
2 Stars
Kasabian - 48:13
A little bit like if Jez and Super Hans from Peep Show got a record deal.
Album Review
3 Stars
Open Mike Eagle - Dark Comedy
Goofily serious, but rarely ever with the intention of fun.
Album Review
2 Stars
The Fresh & Onlys - House of Spirits
A long way from their best work.
Album Review
3 Stars
Tom Vek - Luck
More questions than answers, more problems than solutions.
16th June
Album Review
4 Stars
Boris - Noise
A singularly intense and essential album.
Album Review
4 Stars
Cerebral Ballzy - Jaded & Faded
They’re dirtier, filthier, meaner, and more visceral and raw than ever before.
Album Review
4 Stars
Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence
She’s a Wes Anderson character that’s wound up in a David Lynch film, and she knows it.
Album Review
4 Stars
Lone - Reality Testing
It’s Cutler’s wild imaginations being given their own space.
Album Review
3 Stars
Lower - Seek Warmer Climes
A dizzying display of post-hardcore tinged no wave that scrunches up your senses and then obliterates them for good measure.
Album Review
4 Stars
The Antlers - Familiars
Not only hauntingly beautiful, but more than rewards.
Album Review
4 Stars
White Lung - Deep Fantasy
White Lung’s snarliest and most bloodthirsty record to date.
23rd June
Album Review
3 Stars
Eaux - Plastics
An album which blurs the line between retro and futuristic techno.
Album Review
4 Stars
How To Dress Well - What Is This Heart?
An artist who is more determined than ever.
Album Review
4 Stars
Mastodon - Once More 'Round The Sun
Despite becoming one of the biggest metal bands around, Mastodon manage to keep much of the same edge as an underground band.
30th June
Album Review
3 Stars
Brontide - Artery
Both inherently melodic and genre-spanning.
Album Review
4 Stars
George Ezra - Wanted On Voyage
He could be singing his shopping list, and it would still sound charged with pure emotion.
Album Review
3 Stars
Phantogram - Voices
A fearless, hands-on approach to the rebirth of trip-hop through the eyes of two New Yorkers.
Album Review
2 Stars
Remember Remember - Forgetting The Present
Remember Remember choose to teeter on the edge of epic rather than fiercely indulging in it.
