Various Artists - Now That’s What We Call Music (Fantastic Plastic)

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Taking a leaf from the Rough Trade book, the Fantastic Plastic label marks its 100th release with this compilation of highlights from the centenary. Fantastic Plastic began life as a small-town Irish record shop and has grown into a strong yet typically ‘indie’ label. At first it appears that art-pop will be [...]

Marseille Figs – The Dirty Canon

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(FOL1)
Marseille Figs make music like the 20th century didn’t happen. This is Wild West saloon, honky-tonk, Cajun, spit ‘n’ sawdust, frontier-town, barnstorming rabble-rousing – more authentic than Rednex’s Cotton Eyed Joe maybe, but not by much. The trio, led by Californian, London-based J Maizlish, cause all kinds of discordant noises with ukuleles, mouth [...]

Untitled Musical Project – ‘Untitled Musical Project’

(Tigertrap)
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They win the prize for the most unimaginative band name ever, but Untitled Musical Project are not a group who have much time for imagination anyway. They barely have time for their own songs, thrashing out eight of them in this debut 18-minute mini-album. The Brummie band make unreconstructed, dishevelled yet urgent punk. [...]

Friska Viljor – Bravo!

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(Crying Bob)
Need a little something to raise your spirits as the dark winter months draw in? This debut from Swedish duo Friska Viljor may well do the trick. After all, the Stockholm-based friends claim to have written all the songs after parties and nights out – whilst drunk, in other words. This manifests [...]

Super Furry Animals, Barrowlands, 18 Oct

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Welsh Britpop survivors turned psychadelic cult favourites Super Furry Animals should be perfectly suited to the semi-intimate, kitschy warmth of the Barrowlands. Although it’s far from a capacity crowd, the compact tribe of fans give the band an equally warm welcome. But while tracks like Juxtapozed With U and Zoom! sound as deliciously acid-fried [...]

The Hives (Vigilante Carlstrom) Interview

A member of The Hives should need no encouragement to exercise his vocal chords in interview. Recall if you will: they are the band from Sweden who swept in on the garage rock revival of the early noughties with their kinetic, monochrome punk; the band who sold t-shirts with slogans like [...]

mewithoutYou – Brother Sister

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(Strange Addiction)
Christian Rock - a genre that’s doomed from the start, given that the twin concepts involved sit together about as cosily as Songs of Praise and Jerry Springer: The Opera. Furthermore, any rock band that proclaims a faith is usually deemed ‘preachy’, or just morphs into some hideous paradoxical pastiche of [...]

Six Organs of Admittance – Shelter From The Ash

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(Drag City)
When technical genius is your major selling point there is always that precarious tightrope to be scaled, separating the lofty heights of the virtuoso and the fatal depths of self-indulgence. This is the rub for Six Organs of Admittance, the alter-ego of Comets On Fire guitarist Ben Chasny. The coruscating passages he brews [...]