The brothers Cris and Curt Kirkwood have experienced a rollercoaster life through nearly 30 years as Meat Puppets. Their story includes signing to the seminal US punk label SST, transitioning from punk to their trademark ‘cow punk’ sound, their role in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged and a tragic trail of drug addiction and prison. Through all of this, they have kept coming back to the music, … Continue reading REVIEW: MEAT PUPPETS – Sewn Together
Punk is a pretty overused word to describe bands these days. It can veer from Fugazi to Sex Pistols to Blink 182 which is a fairly wide net to cast. Talons come stumbling and crawling on bloodied knees from the Sydney ‘Punk’ scene with their debut self titled album and they are definitely punk, the type that is uncompromising, raw, real and intense. As a … Continue reading REVIEW: TALONS – self titled
New Zealand’s Lawrence Arabia (aka James Milne) has been a prolific musician on the NZ music scene over the last few years. With his band The Reduction Agents and stints with both the Ruby Suns and The Brunettes he is a man well versed in melodic indie pop songs. On his second solo album Chant Darling he ups the ante with sweet harmonies, nagging dark … Continue reading REVIEW: LAWRENCE ARABIA – Chant Darling
Indie guitar pop used to be a simple equation. Sweet melodic vocals over rushes of energetic guitar chords. It was music you could dance to, music to romance to. Somewhere along the way things changed and the pure side of indie pop merged with punk and post punk, adding a dissonance and edge to the music. Michael Benjamin Lerner is essentially the one-man band Telekinesis … Continue reading REVIEW: TELEKINESIS – Telekinesis!
We have reviewed Fink’s Sort Of Revolution for FasterLouder and its a goodie, a late night burner that will gently migrate amongst music listeners… Brighton resident Fin Greenall is the man behind the Fink moniker. Sort Of Revolution is his third release for Ninja Tune. His style of songwriting is a well balanced mix of soul and folk, incorporating jazz and electronic elements with subtlety. … Continue reading REVIEW: FINK – Sort Of Revolution
Doubtful Sounds has reviewed this for the wonderful folks over at FasterLouder. Coming across like a tsunami of colour and rapturous eclecticism, Ponytail rose from the ashes of an art school project. They were able to harness their schizophrenic live sound and wrestle it onto their second full length, Ice Cream Spiritual. READ MORE… Continue reading REVIEW: PONYTAIL – Ice Cream Spiritual
1 2 3 4 5 REVIEWED FOR WIRELESS BOLLINGER – please visit them for all things indie… Leader Cheetah’s The Sunspot Letters is an album that creeps up on you. There are no grand gestures, no great peaks of brilliance, just a certain sound and mood that washes over the record and leaves an impression. Hailing from Adelaide and rising from the ashes of his … Continue reading REVIEW: LEADER CHEETAH – The Sunspot Letters
Papercuts (primarily Jason Quever) may or may not see themselves as part of a burgeoning scene but one can quite easily place them in the midst of other contemporary acts like Vetiver, Beach House and BrightBlack, All these groups share a commonality in folk music though they each stretch and tease the standard version of folk that we have come to know. Papercuts are also … Continue reading REVIEW: PAPERCUTS – You Can Have What You Want
written by Chris Familton Secretly Canadian have had a pretty high success rate of late with releases from Antony + The Johnsons, Jens Lekman and The War On Drugs. Their most recent is The Atlantic Ocean, Richard Swift’s fourth album, and it is a bold collection of songs that take the listener on a kaleidoscopic trip through the quirkier side of pop. This time round … Continue reading REVIEW: RICHARD SWIFT – The Atlantic Ocean
Sometimes it is a fine line between creating music that is honest and original versus music that treads the waters of mediocrity. Some bands can create their own unique sound that becomes their trademark but, inevitably, others will follow in their footsteps, cherry-picking the best or most commercially viable aspects of the music and recycling it under their name. Granted, no band these days is … Continue reading REVIEW: WHITE LIES – To Lose My Life…
Scott Rosenberg has taken the moniker of his previous band Pink Mountain and with a cast of many he has created a record that suitably matches the ambitiously named Scott Pinkmountain & The Golden Bolts Of Tone. The result is an epic, sprawling and psychedelic chamber pop opus entitled The Full Sun. The album begins unassumingly with ‘Song Of Solomon’, a piano based paean to … Continue reading REVIEW: SCOTT PINKMOUNTAIN & THE GOLDEN BOLTS OF TONE -The Full Sun
On the back of their debut album, Montreal’s Plants And Animals have been nominated for two 2009 JUNO awards (best New Band and Alternative Album) which is the equivalent of Australia’s ARIA awards. Coupled with that was a nomination for Canada’s Polaris Music Prize last year and you could say they have had a meteoric rise to fame. One that is sure to now gain … Continue reading REVIEW: PLANTS AND ANIMALS – Parc Avenue
Doubtful Sounds 