2014 has been a pretty good year for Scottish music, or at least looks to be. During the last eight months or so Fatherson have released potentially the year’s best debut record, with the likes of Lonely The Brave and The Xcerts yet to release highly anticipated albums during the next four months. Things are… Read More Twin Atlantic – Great Divide (Review)
In a genre which seems to be evolving and branching out by the year husband and wife duo Keith and Cathy Latinen, also known as Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate), have been an ever reliable constant. Over the last eight years they’ve been consistently releasing music, the high point of which was (and… Read More Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) – You Will Eventually Be Forgotten (Review)
After a debut release as utterly brilliant as Now, Voyager three years is a fair amount of time to wait for a follow-up, but after some doubts about whether it would ever see the light of day Home, Truths , the first full-length from Manchester band The Cape Race is well worth the wait, living… Read More The Cape Race – Home, Truths (Review)
Around this time two weeks ago, shortly after posting my review of Basement’s Further Sky EP my half-decade old laptop inexplicably died, and remains dead, sitting on my bookcase waiting for a quick eBay sale after a hard drive wipe. Thankfully I keep all of my music safely backed up on an external hard drive,… Read More Music I’ve Been Listening To (10/08)
The Gaslight Anthem aren’t one of those bands who constantly need to alter their sound massively in order to stay relevant. They probably never will be, but frontman Brian Fallon’s interviews during the build-up to the bands fifth studio album Get Hurt suggested that the band were branching out, trying some extensive new things and exploring their… Read More The Gaslight Anthem – Get Hurt (Review)
I’ve been under the weather lately, and haven’t been sleeping more than a few hours per night, so a lot of the reviews were written during late night writing sessions – apologies if it shows. Hopefully I’ll get my shit together in the next few days, and if you’d like to send anything for consideration… Read More Music Submissions 11: Sunken Monkey / Drawback / Blis. / The Gallerist / Sleep Cycles / Dicepeople / Ross Palmer
All it took was a single tweet of ‘Hi’ back in January to send the internet into frenzy – could Basement really be back? The answer was a resounding yes, and now six months later the band are releasing their first material since 2012’s exceptional Colourmeinkindness, and that material comes in the form of EP Further… Read More Basement – Further Sky EP (Review)
When I think of Charlie Simpson as a musician I always think of him as Charlie Simpson of Fightstar, not necessarily Charlie Simpson the solo artist or Charlie Simpson of Busted. It would’ve been even harder to think of him as Charlie Simpson of McBusted, so thankfully he kept his musical integrity and promptly declined… Read More Charlie Simpson – Long Road Home (Review)
It’s hard to believe that Maybe This Place Is The Same And We’re Just Changing is Real Friends’ debut record. Over the last few years they’ve become one of the most popular young bands in pop-punk, and listening to their debut it’s easy enough to see why, but it’s also clear that they still have… Read More Real Friends – Maybe This Place Is The Same And We’re Just Changing (Review)
McCafferty – McCafferty Is Dead (2012-2014) I’ve a lot of love for McCafferty. The band’s debut full-length record BeachBoy was the first release I got around to reviewing this year, and I still listen to it frequently seven months on. When the band announced their split via Facebook last night I was understandably sad, moreso when I found out that… Read More Music I’ve Been Listening To (19/07)
‘It’s been a long time coming / I spent a long time rotting before I got going’ A few months back Dikembe sent out a tweet instructing critics to refer to their new record as ‘feebleviolence’. Being some kind of critic I thought ‘Okay, I’ll roll with it’, and now that I’ve listened to the… Read More Dikembe – Mediumship (Review)
I’ve been away for the last two weeks, so I’ve developed a bit of a backlog of submissions, and I’ve featured a bunch of them below. If you’d like to send anything my way then please feel free, there are several ways to do so on my contact page. Mathien – Unique Man (Album) I… Read More Music Submissions 10: Mathien / The Guru / Get Up Go / Wet Petals / Murk Daddy Flex / Ava Marie / Speaking In Shadows
So, I’ve been on holiday for the last week. I won’t bore you with the details, but I came home to something and I’ll bore you with that instead. This afternoon I opened my door and found the latest issue of Rocksound siting behind it, and I noticed that Australian band / group / pop-rock sensation(alism) 5 Seconds Of Summer are… Read More 5 Seconds Of Summer On The Cover Of Rocksound? Hmmm…
Nouns – Still Bummed Seeing as we just entered the second half of 2014 I was considering compiling a ‘Best Of The Year So Far…’ list, in a way that blogs like mine tend to, but decided against it. If I had put together said list then Nouns’ second record Still would’ve topped it – I’ve yet to… Read More Music I’ve Been Listening To (06/07)
When was the last time you listened to a record and really became absorbed by the lyrical content of said record? Maybe it was last year’s The Greatest Generation, which was released by Dan ‘Soupy’ Campbell’s main project The Wonder Years? Perhaps it wasn’t, but it doesn’t really matter because there’s a good chance We… Read More Aaron West and The Roaring Twenties – We Don’t Have Each Other (Review)
It’s been a good year for British singer-songwriters thus far. As I sit down to type this Ed Sheeran has just announced that X has sold 182,000 copies in its opening week – the highest first week sales of 2014 six months in. Granted, Lewis Watson’s first album won’t sell as many copies upon release,… Read More Lewis Watson – The Morning (Review)
Mosey Jones – Spinning (EP) After two years away Spinning marks the return of Brooklyn-based trio Mosey Jones, and given how good it is it’s probably good to have them back. The band play a style of emo / indie-rock 90’s style, and although their nostalgic blend isn’t entirely unique the four tracks that make up their… Read More Music Submissions 9: Mosey Jones / dressmaker / Distorted Harmony / Left In The Wake / Nurture & Antpile / Dr. Lakata
I’m a huge Ed Sheeran fan, and I love the guy for a number of reasons. One of those reasons, and the one which is least relevant to this review is that since the release of + back in 2011 he’s made being ginger almost socially acceptable again. I can’t remember the last time someone… Read More Ed Sheeran – X (Review)
Very few bands, if any, do it as well as Every Time I Die, and even fewer do it this well seven records into their career. Over the last fifteen years the Buffalo band have released incredible record after incredible record, and the trend unsurprisingly continues with From Parts Unknown, which is easily up there… Read More Every Time I Die – From Parts Unknown (Review)
I haven’t got around to putting one of these posts together for a month now, so apologies for that, but in that time there’s been a lot of stuff sent in, some of which I’ve written about below. If you want to send something my way then please feel free using the means on my… Read More Music Submissions 8: GRYSCL / Musique Le Pop / Seth Paul Macchi / Kaninchen / Pissghetti / Everybody Looks Famous
Craig Reviews Music 