How is it that all I want to do is post a link to a song that’s in some way related to the Eurovision song contest, but about an hour after finding the right video,...

Before Labrador, there was Stockholm Records, a Swedish indie set up in 1992 and now a part of the Universal Music Group. And before Club 8, there were The Cardigans, stitching their twee mark on...

Club 8’s label-mates The Radio Dept. have, over the course of three albums, and assorted singles and EPs, mostly stuck to a fuzzy low-fi template; the distorted vocals of the perennial outsider accompanying simple strummed...

Not to be confused with S Club 8, S Club 7, S Club etc

Et maintenant, la musique pop francaise! Cette chanson s’appelle Mille Fois, comme le gateau. Presque. Je l’aime beaucoup: c’est belle, non?

This fresh-faced young thing was billed as the Norwegian Badly Drawn Boy. An entirely musical comparison, I would say; hard to see Lerche in amiable beanie-topped shambling. While reviewing his fourth album Phantom Punch, The...

Speaking of dramatic scenery and atmosphere, here’s Sigur Rós, who you may know as the band responsible for Hoppípolla - the soundtrack to every sweeping landscape segment of every documentary and tv series circa 2006/7/8/9…...

Pantha Du Prince (aka German DJ and producer Hendrik Weber) takes found sounds, field recordings, sprinkles over minimal techno, investigating the hinterlands of silence and noise, reality and artificiality. In so doing,

If Scandi/Nordic noir didn’t grab you, chances are Broadchurch introduced you to a new kind of minimal musical backdrop. Here they Used to Build Ships is taken from an album soundtracking a film (Copenhagen Dreams)...

The story: Belgium rock band releases blinding second album “Much against Everyone’s Advice”, shows playful side by covering Nik Kershaw, puts down guitars, and plays a significant part in the development of mash-ups, in their...

I was thinking of celebrating all things musically European at some point, and what better time than the dizzying aftershock of local council elections that saw literally tens of people turn out to vote for...

It’s the European love-in month.

It’s almost as if they heard the news that they’d been ousted at the top of my most played list by The House of Love, but The National are back three years after High Violet...

Loving the new album from The Leisure Society - since their first album, Sleeper, they’ve really expanded on the sound and the arrangements, without losing any of that keen melodic sense.

Last but not necessarily least, and first on my list of bands seen live, here’s Catherine Wheel, with Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce) leading it out in front of a Finsbury Park horde....

Enough 1990s already!

Teenage Fanclub spent 1993 being a generally brilliant collective song-writing animal, mostly living out their Big Star revival fantasies, only dialling it up occasionally. Like here, for instance.

It occurred to me recently that as much as I like New Order, I never actually seem to listen to them. Odd. And just now,...

Even on an album that included Cherub Rock, surely this was always Siamese Dream’s killer track.

I’m well aware that I was there first musical boasts are empty glories at best, but for the record (heh) I bought this the first time around, when it sold no more than a handful...