Tracks - page 30

The melancholy tones of Gruff Rhys and the precise electronica of Tomas Barfod make for ideal companions in this Record Store Day release, out later this month on Secretly Canadian. And not to sound like...

As the members of Big Star fought and scratched at each others mental fragility, occasionally stooping to deliberately sabotage recording sessions for their third and final album Third/Sister Lovers, they were at the same time...

Reservoir is so simple, yet so perfect. Why spend your time or money on elaboration when you can construct pop out of a simple keyboard melody and a not terribly intricate drum programme?

William Butler Yeats has long been an influence on the song-writing of Mike Scott of The Waterboys, but only an occasional trickle of tracks had directly come from adaptations of the poet’s works. Then, in...

It starts about 30 seconds in: after a simple picked guitar intro, a single mournful violin speaks of loneliness. Friends appear: a quartet is formed; together they weave a spell of downy softness. Hinson’s gravel...

After the slightest dip in form, some artists appear doomed to suffer their every release being described as a return to form. With each new album, amnesiac journalists will wonder: is this the one? Is...

According to the brilliant Nick Kent There Is A Light That Never Goes Out 'suffers from an arrangement that utilises synthesised strings and the like, which simply detracts from the thrust of the performance, making...

Unperturbed by my continuing failure to review their (spoiler alert!) wonderful Let's Go Extinct, Fanfarlo have pressed on manfully, releasing another video from the album, this time for Cell Song.

When I wrote about Mumm-Ra’s fabulous track She’s Got You High last summer I mentioned that the band were recording again, having split up after releasing just a single album,...

I sometimes feel that the 90s gets a bad rap, with its whole ‘decade that fashion forgot tag. And then I watch a video like this (yes I know this single came out in November...

It’s always exciting to hear of something new from the talented Yann Tiersen. Here, on the first track from forthcoming album ∞ (Infinity), the man of many instruments and at least as many styles does...

I’d always thought that Levelling the Land represented a chart peak for The Levellers. Clearly I’d failed to observe that its self-titled follow-up reached number 2 in 1993, while 1995’s Zeitgeist went one better on...

Songs from the Shipyards was the final release in a trilogy of albums by folk group The Unthanks in a prolific period from the end of 2011 to the end of 2012. The first of...

Reacting, as always, to what the people are thinking, I saw this on my twitter feed earlier and knew what I had to post today:

After yesterday’s brief Kate Bush (city limits) detour we’re back with Julia Kent again - this time in her guise as one of the Johnsons,...

The Man With the Child in His Eyes was written when Bush was just 13, and recorded in 1975, when she was still only 16. That is remarkable, yet not so unusual when placed in...

I’m a little too tired to do lyrical justice to the beautiful layers, loops and motifs of Transportation, taken from Julia Kent’s 2013 album Character, so I’ll just let her explain a little about the...

He can deny it all he wants here, but you know deep down that Stuart Murdoch really does want to dance all night like he’s a soul boy. Why else would Belle & Sebastian have...

Time for a quick and easy game of connections: Yesterday’s track was Candy by Ash, which featured a sample of Make it Easy on Yourself, originally by The Walker Brothers. That song was...

Since the 20th anniversary of their debut release on March 5th, Ash have been steadily adding tracks to Soundcloud. I listened to that debut, Jack Names the Planets, in no small state of shock at...