One-minute reviews – 1: Rowland S. Howard, The Mint Chicks, Eddie Hinton, Reverend Horton Heat
Self-explanatory, really. Fuck reviewing albums in 140 characters or less. Anyone with half an ear and an eye for Elmore Leonard dialogue can do that. The real challenge is: can you say everything that needs to be said, given only 60 seconds on the clock? Rowland S. Howard – Pop Crimes Ex-Birthday Party guitarist dude […]
Spotlight – 21: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
They’re a little bit Singing Loins. They’re a little bit Tiger Lillies (except I really didn’t like their act when I caught them at the Spiegeltent last year in Brisbane). They’re a little bit… what’s that band… Gogol Bordello. Very smart, very droll lyrics. Very theatrical. Very philanthropic. Lots of accordion and background shouting and roustabout […]
Spotlight – 20: Hello Cuca
You know already, of course. At least, I expect you know already. I mean, you must know already. Don’t you? Whatever. Even if you do know already, you might not be prepared for the following video, which rocks so fucking hard it’s raising blisters on my fingers as I type. (Taken from Plan B #45) Hello […]
Spotlight – 19: Las Kellies
“Horses are running everywhere/While I eat my cornflakes/I prepare to go to the beach/Which one I will choose?” This morning, a package arrived from Nottingham, from a former Plan B writer. I love shit like this. Makes life totally worthwhile, when friends you haven’t even ever met send you stuff just cos they think you […]
Spotlight – 18: Super Wild Horses
By Bangs, there’s so much great stuff out there waiting to be unearthed. A reader sent me the link through to this – primal garage rock, played just the way I like it. Vim, vigour, vitality, with viccisitude and a little bit of Bo Diddley, good and grungy (in the old-fashioned, 1988 Happy Mondays/1957 Johnny Burnette, […]
Spotlight – 16: Irmin Schmidt
This is what I listen to when I want to relax. Blank out the sound of the Roald Dahl audio-cassettes, the butcher birds circling and perching perilously close on our deck, the occasional rush of helicopter wind, Isaac complaining because he’s been sitting still too long. One of the applications on my iPod Touch that […]
Spotlight – 15: Kids Love Lies
The ‘Count In My Head’ EP is like everything thrown in together. Brash guitars, synchronised handclaps, “whoa-oh-oh’s” like Kate Nash sings them, chirpy and bouncy and racing along at way too fast a lick – indeed, this is what I like to imagine the State Of The Art sounds like in 2009, although let’s face […]
Spotlight – 13: The Deadnotes
I should declare a prior interest somewhere. But really, what first attracted me to this band – trained in the “school of error” as practised by Maher Shalal Hash Baz and all those other naive orchestral delights, accomplished keyboards man Leighton Craig of the firm belief that where drummers went wrong was when they first […]
