Funny, open and engaging, Daniel Ash is not quite what you might expect from the man behind some of the darkest and most experimental music of the past 40 years. The founder of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets is back on the road with new ensemble Poptone and teasing the prospect of new music and a European tour. Featuring the father-daughter […]
Alternative Rock
33 posts
Fresh from a sold out show at London’s Meltdown on Thursday (June 21) – Kristin Hersh is previewing a rough mix of Breathe In from her new solo album Possible Dust Clouds. Beside performing at Meltdown, the prolific singer-songwriter also took part in a discussion on mental health at the festival, which is being curated by The Cure‘s Robert Smith. The panel discussion, replaced a […]
Something of an alternative supergroup, Shriekback came into being – at least as Barry Andrews tells it – after he was doggedly pursued by bassist Dave Allen. Allen, looking to form a new band after the demise of Gang of Four, was keen to hook up with the keyboard player who’d quit XTC, after losing a power struggle with Andy Partridge. Initially reluctant, Andrews […]
Never a dull place even at the worst of times, Camden Rocks had the whole borough buzzing on Saturday. With 200 acts performing in 20 venues, wherever you turned there was live music to be heard. Beer, bands and bonhomie – what could be better? With so much to see the only problem was where to drop anchor for […]
Recorded at the same Skyline studios, where they made their best-selling major label debut Flood, I Like Fun feels like a hearkening back to They Might Be Giants‘ glory days of old. TMBG fans have long learned to expect the unexpected and this their 20th album is typically eclectic, mixing and mashing genres from surf-punk to funk, college rock to avant […]
REM have unveiled a new mini-documentary to mark the 25th anniversary re-mastered release of Automatic for the People. Featuring new interviews with Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills, along with co-producer Scott Litt, the film charts the making of what many consider to be the band’s finest album “Culturally, 1992 in America was not an easy place to be,” Stipe remarks on the background to […]
I was lucky enough to catch Suzie Stapleton opening for Boss Hog at the Hackney Oslo earlier this year. Playing for someone else’s audience is never easy but, despite wrestling with some recalcitrant loop pedals, a solo Stapleton secured a great reception. The Sydney-born singer-guitarist won over the crowd with her smoky, rasping voice and full bodied swamp-blues playing style and she’s been […]
Having spent the first 10 minutes crushed beneath someone’s armpit in a packed and sweaty Scala, it’s painfully obvious Thurston Moore still has a massive following in London. They were still cramming them in well into the start of his set on a sultry June Thursday night and the former Sonic Youth man seemed pleased to be back in his […]
Spanning 30 years of recording, Lovely Creatures is a collection of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds music from their 1984 debut From Her To Eternity to 2013’s 15th studio album Push The Sky Away. Compiled by Cave and longtime Bad Seeds cohort Mick Harvey, the album was scheduled for release in Autumn 2015, but shelved following the death of Cave’s 15-year-old son […]
Sub Pop veterans the Afghan Whigs have been ploughing their own peculiar furrow through American rock for more than 30 years now. In Spades is their second album of new material since returning to recording in 2014 with To The Beast.