Album name: The Great Disruptors EP Artist name: Sweethead Genre: Rock Released: July 13 2009 Label: Strange Addiction ZME Rating: 8/10 Website: sweethead.net With PJ Harvey taking various detours away from her intelli-punk rock of old, Brody Dalle’s Spinerette sounding less like the Distillers than a slightly more modern No Doubt, and Courtney Love continuing to disappear into a putrid puddle of confused irrelevance, there’s a gaping hole in the rock industry, just waiting for…
Album title: West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum Artist name: Kasabian Genre: Rock/Psychedelia Released: 5 June 2009 Label: Columbia ZME Rating: 7/10 Website: kasabian.co.uk When one of rock’s popular young pretenders attempt a concept album inspired by LSD-infused 60s psychedelia in 2009, it is difficult to know whether to commend British exports Kasabian or rip them apart. Upon a first spin of West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, one thing is for sure – this is not…
We’re three songs into Ham Sandwich’s set in Whelan’s, and the entire crowd is already covered in confetti and there are maybe ten beach ball-sized balloons being batted between audience and band. Everyone in the venue is either grinning madly or openly laughing. Ham Sandwich are clearly here to have some fun. But wait: like a bunch of drunks in charge of a time machine, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. (That’s an old Mr. Biffo…
Provocative artwork? Surely not. That’s not blood on the cover of the new Manic Street Preachers album, just a boy with one side of his face more red than the other. Or to put it in more artistic terms a la frontman James Dean Bradfield, “a much more modern version of Lucian Freud-esque brushstrokes”. But either way you look at it, this work of album-cover artistry for the Journal for Plague Lovers has been banned…
Those masters of the shoe gaze, My Bloody Valentine, plan to inflict another dose of high-octane, high-volume progressive sounds at a secret LA show – said to be a warm-up for their Coachella appearance at the weekend. They will perform at the El Rey Theatre, located on the city’s Miracle Mile, on April 16th. For anyone who hasn’t heard it already, Kevin Shield’s guitar-laden wall-upon-wall of sound shook the plaster off many music venue ceilings…
So we get to see yet another Jack White incarnation take to the stage this month. His Garage-blues supergroup, The Dead Weather, is booked to play New York’s Bowery Ballroom on April 14th. They were officially announced as an outfit less than a month ago, when White moved his Third Man vinyl record label to his newly adopted home of Nashville, Tennessee. This time around, the multi-talented rock svengali has decided to have a go…
If you happen to hear the sounds of a million and three alternative fans whooping and hollering in delight over the next few months, it’s probably something to with the Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction/Street Sweeper tour that’s sweeping the globe this year. Which, surprisingly, we haven’t covered even once – feel free to slap us about the gums for that oversight, readers! But! We do have important news and gifts to make up for it!…
Through out their short spanned existence, the post grunge Tallahassee quartet Creed rapidly gained popularity among clearly troubled youth, selling millions of records and, in the process, becoming one of the most atrocious bands the earth has ever seen. No, I don’t hate Creed, not more than your average decent music lover, anyway. I can’t lie, I did my own little victory dance when I finally heard the band disbanded, but with these recent news…
On June 27, 2006, Sleater-Kinney announced they were going on “indefinite hiatus”. On August 12, they played their last show together in Portland, Oregon with Eddie Vedder as support. Almost three years later, I wanted to pay my respects to this great band by analysing their final, great stand – The Woods. I was lucky enough to be present at what would prove to be Sleater-Kinney’s first and only Irish gig, in the dark, cramped…
Artist name: U2 Album name: No Line on the Horizon Label: Interscope Genre: Rock Release date: 27 February, 2009 ZMErating: 9/10 Website: www.u2.com Now, if I were to describe my feelings towards No Line on the Horizon, before spinning it, I’d definitely disapprove of anticipation and call for skepticism. Few albums were given in the past years, that promised to become huge slumps, only to transcend to classic LP status. I almost was prepared to…
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