It Starts With a Birthstone...

 

  Burial remain enigmatic. A couple of acclaimed albums way back in 2006 and 2007. Very intermittent EPs since. Now one entitled Streetlands...

  Minutemen;s Nickels on the Dime. A record I love, but don't know very well. Time to get to know it better. It's imported now at Th...

  Jake graduates and becomes a teacher in France and Algeria where he develops his fundamental formative influence.

 

  Now this is tremendous. From it's opening notes where it announces in no clear terms exactly what is going to do. It's  Fall in Lo...

 Missed out on this rundown yesterday, so you get two today.   Sometimes I surprise myself. On Saturday morning, flipping through new album ...

 

  The sound of my youth. I turned 15 in 1980 and Girls in Synthesis' debut album The Rest is Distraction. sounds like much of the dread...

 

  Jake at university.

 

Swedish Psychsters Dungen don their wooly pulleys for first album since 2016, En Ar For Mycket och Tusen Nog   ' and you try saying that...

  School sharpens Jake's wit. He rejects the priesthood and instead makes his way to Durham University.

    Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have a sound that immediately appeals to me. A crystalline gleaming guitar sound, three of them no less,...

 

 

  A rather lovely album, out of Canada, as so much great stuff seems to be these days. Toronto's Julianna Riolino knows her Dolly and he...

  When I was growing up in the UK, there was a Television programme on the mid Evening BBC that was a fixture for most British family's ...

  Alena Diane remains one of our most treasurable and special musical artists. I first came across her in 2009, shortly after I moved to New...

 

 

  Not what you might expect from an artist called Skullcrusher. Meditative, reflective pieces from Helen Ballantine from Mount Vernon, New Y...

    In the quite music wonderful film  High Fidelity,  which nails so much of the obsessive and generally male disposition of lifelong obses...

 

 

  The kind of thing that's generally called bedroom or dream pop from Portuguese born but London based artist.

  The dark finale that anyone who knows Lush, knew what was coming. Chris Acland's suicide. It feels like a punch in the gut. Miki ties ...

    Those young people. They are good for some things. I'm grateful to my friend Molly, who's one of those, who put me onto this, a ...

 

 

  A rather lovely debut album from the well named Seattle band Cozy Slippers. All creamy harmonies and jangly, sunny guitars. A reminder of ...

You can't beat Jazz singing like this. Coltrane's OK too I suppose.  

  Bill Callahan occupies a certain space these days, having worked and refined his persona in a particular direction down the years. He'...

  Onto the whole Brit Pop experience which Miki is certainly no fan of, given the rampant ego and laddism. Still, Lush do have a hit.

  Monochrome Set and particularly lead singer Bid's vision remains a singular one decades after their initial conception. On latest albu...

 

 

  Blond and tanned and hairyand Aryan  to an almost cliched degree, psychedelic Australian surfer band Babe Rainbow are back. Flowing nicely...

  The once in a lifetime Lollapalooza comes to an end and Lush knuckle down to the more mundane task of album Number Two.

   The opening track on Regina Spektor's new album  Home, before & after,  sum up her and her appeal and charms, better possibly tha...

 

 

  Perhaps the terminal station of this Post Punk. A young woman apparently going mad in song about the internet.

Sheffield quartet doing wonderful Psych meet Welsh druids thing. Must investigate further.  

  'It's a great record, Two self-absorbed aesthetes wander the streets if Dunedin, indulgently imagining they are the protagonists i...

  Lush. A British Indie band of medium profile have the fabulous experience of performing on a Lolapalooza Festival touring bill with Jane...

Bands have always need to transition to survive. At least if you're not planning to become Status Quo. Halifax's finest, Orielles cl...

  Crunchy, glad to be alive from New Zealand band Best Bets know exactly what they're doing .Debut album  On An Unhistoric Night  has be...