Jon Brooks – Shapwick - February 2013 February 24th, 2013

As The Advisory Circle, Brooks has essayed an ambivalently nostalgic electronica, critiquing our relationship with British landscapes via the deployment of signifiers snatched from the schools television soundtracks of the collective subconscious. Under his own name, Brooks revisits the day he quit a congested motorway to drift in darkness through the Somerset village of Shapwick.…

The Green Pajamas – Death By Misadventure - February 2013 February 17th, 2013

If The Byrds or REM had joined the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood maybe they’d have played the baroque folk-pop Seattle’s Green Pajamas have pushed since 1984. Still stalked by dark ladies and ghost lovers, The Pajamas’ 30th album in an apparently infinitely sustainable career satisfies regular customers’ expectations of effortlessly hummable guitar pop – Supervirgin’s McCartney bass…

Anais Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer – Child Ballads - February 2013 February 10th, 2013

The Vermont indie-folkster Anais Mitchell’s own songs echo archaic British folk lyrics, and she’s spearheaded the rediscovery of the English folksinger Nic Jones. Last Summer, I saw New Yorker Jefferson Hamer playing along anonymously in a traditional session in an Edinburgh bar. Like Dylan and Paul Simon in the ‘60s, the dutiful duo sought the…

Sparrow And The Workshop – Murderopolis - February 2013 February 6th, 2013

Jill O’Sullivan, Belfast born but Chicago raised, fills her lungs and sucks the trademark Alternative Country and Post Rock sounds of the windy city through the filter of a dramatically dour Welsh-Scottish rhythm section. Valley Of Death, Water Wont Fall and Avalanche of Lust suggest some lost widescreen western cowgirl, like Neko Case or Paula…

Anthroprophh – Anthroprophh - January 2013 January 27th, 2013

If The Heads, who’ve spent two decades hammering at the coalface of Stooges-derived spacerock, hailed from Japan or Finland they’d be living legends. Instead, they’re from Bristol, and remain prophets without honour. Their vocalist and guitarist Paul Allen’s new project, Anthroprophh, moves his influences forward eighteen months from late 1969 to mid 1971, adding kosmische…

Alasdair Roberts & Friends – A Wonder Working Stone - January 2013 January 20th, 2013

Once, Alasdair Roberts leavened his love of traditional Scottish styles with a sloppy-casual indie sensibility. Now he burns like a convert and demands we meet on his mountaintop. His egoless, idiomatic writing style indistinguishable from centuries old song, Roberts, and his gifted ensemble, graft surges of orchestrated acid-folk-rock abandon, dainty highland dance tunes, and florid…