Live review for The Skinny
The unifying theme of this gig was always going to be volume – as in, lots of it. But Edinburgh band Dupec (****) refuse to be blown off the stage by their raucous American successors tonight. The trio pour their all into this their most high profile show to date, crashing [...]
EP review for The Skinny
The current Scottish music scene is healthily diverse, and now Sparrow and the Workshop bring another genre to the mix: country and western. Having only formed last year, the Scottish-Welsh-American trio’s debut EP opens with a brooding vocal harmony between singer Jill O’Sullivan (formerly known as Dead Sparrow) and drummer Gregor [...]
Album review for The Skinny
Anyone acquainted with Bat For Lashes’ highly regarded debut Fur and Gold will know that the Brighton singer-songwriter (real name Natasha Khan) is something of a New Age siren. On this highly anticipated follow-up, she ups the mystic ante, harnessing the tribal energy of kindred spirits Yeasayer (most noticeably on thrilling [...]
[A very poor photograph from my balcony seat]
When David Byrne sings “This ain’t no Mudd Clubb, or CBGB” in Life During Wartime tonight, the lyric has never seemed so true. The formal, seated auditorium of Glasgow Concert Hall is the antithesis of the dirty Lower East Side punk clubs in which Byrne began his musical [...]
Album review for The Skinny
In the endlessly cyclical history of popular music, psychedelic rock has mostly been left to gather dust in record shops. There have been isolated attempts to revive the genre from bands like Comets on Fire and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, but nothing like a concerted revival. Crystal Antlers could well be [...]
EP review for The Line of Best Fit
In these hyper-connected times we’re living in, it’s rare for a band to emerge from seemingly nowhere, with no biographical baggage, no superficial hype and no expectation – and yet utterly astound you with their music. This much I know about Chimes & Bells: they’re a Danish quartet, [...]
Live album review for The Skinny
Liver! Lung! FR! is an intermediary fan-pleaser in which Frightened Rabbit serve up a no-nonsense semi-acoustic live set, rigidly following the track-listing of The Skinny’s album of 2008, The Midnight Organ Fight.
So you might rightly question the worth of such an endeavour; most live albums usually wheel out an unexpected [...]
EP review for The Skinny
Apparently designed to give the lie to those who say the Scottish music scene is too ponderous or introspective, Edinburgh collective FOUND are specialists in skewed, mashed-up folk-tronica. Fans of Attic Lights and Make Model already know about their digital talents thanks to some gloriously glitchy remixes, and The Fidelities EP [...]
Gig review for The Skinny
Crystal Stilts are all about intensity. And in a space as small as Sneaky Pete’s (imagine your living room, minus furniture, plus 100 indie misfits), the intensity of their music – a murky blend of ’60s psych and ’80s shoegaze – is turned up to eleven. Whereas their acclaimed debut album [...]
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