These New Puritans
Hidden

Thirty or forty years ago people looking to the future did so with a mixture of excitement and wonder. It hadn’t been long since man first bounced across the surface of the moon and space exploration still offered up many possibilities to those who dared to dream and wonder. Star Wars and Star Trek were the most popular shows on television because they presented scenarios in which even the most humble cave dweller could fly a jet fighter into the heart of a planet and destroy it in an interstellar firework display that would bring him fame if not fortune nor further acting roles.

Over the years the stuff of science fiction became the stuff of science fact as egg heads and boffins became increasingly more ambitious. However, we are only five years away from having to accept that hover-boards and self drying jackets were the stuff only the imagination of Hollywood script writers...

Gorillaz
Plastic Beach

Gorillaz in the Mist

When the Gorillaz first entered the public consciousness, their gimmick was that they were a band of freakishly ugly cartoon characters who existed in an alternate reality to the one which we inhabit and so technically did not exist therefore drawing people's attention away from the fact that there were any personalities existent in the band and forcing them to focus primarily on the music. For the most part that music was freakishly groovy hip hop of some description, never being completely classifiable yet never straying into territory where a chart smash would be impossible.

Unfortunately it was quickly detected that virtual lead singer 2-D was none other than Blur's Damon Albarn who, in the UK at least, was a well known celebrity adored by school girls and detested by staunch fans of Blur's Britpop rivals Oasis. The huge and glaringly obvious...

High on Fire
Snakes for the Divine

Forgive Me, High On Fire, For I Have Sinned.

A short while ago, I referred to High on Fire as “Hipster Metal”. I should not have done that. Granted, my intent was noble – I solely want to turn more people on to music they may not necessarily listen to in the first place. This is especially important in the case of anything remotely metal, as metal and its various subgenres are the redheaded stepchildren of the music scene. More than ever, a music lover’s worth is being determined by how many different bands they can bring up in conversation that will confound others into respecting one’s taste. However, bringing up metal in conversation usually elicits blank stares or remarks about how “I just don’t get it”. By bringing the term “Hipster Metal” into the fray, I imagine my intent was to dull the image of the burly, tattooed...

Erland & The Carnival
Erland & The Carnival

According to researchers in the psychology faculty at the University of Massachusetts, there are three types of regret that patients diagnosed with depression frequently express.

The first is a regret that they weren't born in the American post war baby boom of 1946-7. Being born at this time would have enabled them to reach their late teens and early twenties just as the free love movement of the mid sixties was in full swing. Being born in America would mean that their geographical status would enable them, by hook or by crook, to get to the crossroads of Haight and Ashbury and experience bands like Love and Fairport Convention capturing the spirit of those times in swirling, heady snatches of song. They could enjoy the one moment in the twentieth century where absolute freedom seemed possible before they took all the drugs away.

The...

Charlotte Gainsbourg
IRM

Scientologist Uses Beauty as Shield!!

I find the idea of Charlotte Gainsbourg as 'artist' a little difficult to get my head around; for a woman who does not write her own music, play an instrument or, despite what I have read about a very traumatic experience upon which she could draw for tomes upon tomes of verses, write her own lyrics, it seems a little strange for her face to be sprawled upon the cover and her name to be made synonymous with the artistic body of work that is IRM. I know that Charlotte will not be the first female to have songs written for her, but she is one of the very few operating within the 'indie and alternative' genre who is getting away with it. I also find it a bit rich that this isn't the first time that she has done this and yet both of her recent albums have met with critical acclaim from a music press who know full well what the deal is.
...

Hot Chip
One Life Stand

How to Grow Up, Influence People and Bag a Girlfriend

It's easy to spot Hot Chip on the dance floors of Friday and Saturday nights all around the country; they stick out like a sore thumb. They're the ones who are scouting for girlfriends not easy lays. There's none of the morally defunct grinding antics for them; no pushing their crotches into the barely covered rears of women threatening to burst out of something garish and lusty. They sip their bottled beers whilst the crowds all around them neck shots and down alcopops as they single-mindedly pursue their ultimate goal of having sex with just about anyone so long as they don't remember it the following morning. They are not dressed in Ben Sherman shirts undone to the naval showing off the smattering of chest hair that their young age has bestowed upon them, they are dressed in comfortable anoraks and they wear chords....

Owen Pallett
Heartland

Since the ill advised fourth instalment of the Indiana Jones trilogy proved the advisors to be a pack of money hungry, artistically redundant hacks who ruined not only my happy childhood memories of the film franchise, but no doubt yours too, I have begun plans to make a fifth instalment of the quadrology in order to redeem Indiana Jones for the younger generations to prove to them that Indy is far more than a novelty tongue in cheek action hero.

The storyline for my instalment of the series hasn't even approached the drawing board but I have a fairly good idea that it will include Nazis, a Christian relic and a screaming woman who will need to be squirted with elephant juices and whipped before she will calm the fuck down. I do, however, know exactly who I will be employing to score the movie. It will not be long time Indy collaborator John Williams, he belongs to the old guard, and...

Joanna Newsom
Have One On Me

The Milk-Eyed Mender, Joanna Newsom's debut album of 2004, was somewhat of an instant career achievement. It automatically placed the young songwriter/harpist at the throne of an indie sub-genre of which people were calling "freak-folk"; her male counterpart being Devendra Banhart, who had risen to cult success on Micheal Gira's Young God Records label that same year with Rejoicing The Hands. "Freak-folk," a title that most of the musicians classified as such despised, was basically defined as anyone who took very traditional folk methods/instruments and added some kind of modern sense of eccentricity, whether it be the playful and bizarre lyrics and vocals of Newsom and Banhart or the hallucinatory arrangements of early Animal Collective. It quickly became a cliché of "play something acoustic and be a weirdo;" and in my opinion it forced all the artists...

Alkaline Trio
This Addiction

A band that publicly announces that it’s "going back to its roots" is usually a band at a crossroads. On one hand, a band that refuses to evolve almost certainly dies a slow, painful death: The Bled, Taking Back Sunday, and Thursday come readily to mind. Then again, going too far off the deep end can abandon the core of the band and alienate even the most steadfast fans: I give you Say Anything, AFI, and The Used. These changes can also yield untold commercial or creative bounties. After all, where would we be if The Beatles never started smoking pot with Bob Dylan and just made "A Hard Day's Night" over and over? Would Green Day still be such a force had Billie Joe and Company not listened to Tommy one too many times? The again, this is not to sneeze at bands that realize what the fans want and what they’re good at. Weezer certainly would not have gained back my...

Frightened Rabbit
The Winter of Mixed Drinks

Just Keep Swimming.

It’s always funny to hear what artists think of their records, especially in interviews at least a couple of years after the mentioned record was released. Unless said guy is Tom Delonge, most band members will tend to be a little bit more honest about the shortcomings of their past LPs. But Scott Hutchinson, the frontman and lyricist for Scottish indie-awesome band Frightened Rabbit, threw me a curveball the other day when talking about his band’s previous record The Midnight Organ Fight. Considering the tidal wave of critical praise levied on the five-some for songs like “The Modern Leper,” Hutchinson wasn’t slow to mention that he ‘regretted’ the way TMOF ended up, even going so far as to say that he “never wanted to make a record like that again.” Big words for such a great album, but FR’s new record, The Winter of Mixed...

Midlake
The Courage of Others

Folk music, while ignored by radio stations and not as popular as in the mid 20th century, is a thriving genre full of wonderful artists who beautifully create music pleasing to the ear and heart. Midlake is one of these bands. Their previous album, The Trials of Van Occupanther, was a beautiful piece of folk music. While I had to adjust to their style, I came to appreciate the intricately crafted songs. I thought I could do the same with The Courage of Others. This was not the case. While not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, The Courage of Others is quite boring. Sad, even. While each song contains lovely guitar melodies which would make for a great instrumental album, the lyrics continuously deal with themes of loss, loneliness and isolation. "I only want to be left to my own ways," Tim Smith sings. That is fine, Tim, just don't spread that weariness of the world over in my...