Tracks - page 35

So here’s a slight mood change from yesterday’s sweeping strings and acoustic melancholy.

Never ones to sit still for long, in 2013 Goldfrapp launched themselves in yet another new direction with Tales of Us. This time there would be no more folktronica, no more glam, no more pagan...

There’s a scene in the 1958 Musical Gigi in which, two by two, couples enter Maxim’s, a restaurant where everyone minds his own business. Or so we are told. As the couples enter, the patrons...

How do you describe an album like Nepenthe? You could focus on the mechanics: the loops, the choir, recording in Iceland with members of Sigur Ros and Mum; you could talk about Barwick’s upbringing, singing...

It takes a lot of skill and control to to let a piece develop slowly, but the more anticipation you can hold, the bigger the release you can unleash. Says is Frahm at his analog,...

On this, her third solo album but first sung in English, Ólöf Arnalds weaves folk landscapes around simple guitar lines and her leaping, dancing vocals. Every now and then her delivery threatens to send the...

Although it surfaced in late 2012, it wasn’t released until January 2013, as the second single from Everything Everything’s second album Arc. We’re not the sort of band who has a top five album, said...

If you really forced me; if I had to name a favourite track from 2013, I'd hesitate, and hedge my bets with a top 3 if I could get away with it, but in my...

Half a century after her death, the poetry of Sylvia Plath seeped into Nick Hemming’s unconscious mind. The resulting song, The Sober Scent of Paper, is as beautiful as it is bleak, as tender as...

When I stumbled across Matt Berry’s wonderful album Kill The Wolf earlier this year I couldn’t help feeling a little foolish for having previously ignored his musical career. Surely, though, I...

From Antidotes five years ago, to Total Life Forever in 2010, and now Holy Fire, Foals have progressed smoothly from a talented but erratic math rock group to one with top notch saviours of indie...

From the smoky late night lounge synths of “Kill, Kill, Kill”, to the hedonistic pop of “A Small Piece of Heaven” and “Less Than Love”, on Above the City Club 8 continued their progression from...

I so nearly forgot this one.

For every cynical music fan (for there are many) wary of cynical cash-in reunions (for there have been many), let Bloodsports be the exception that jumps up on the table, flicks its hair back and...

Grr! 90s angst and sharp edges! I am definitely on board with all of that. I’m lukewarm at best about the woodland rituals, however.

An entire album harking back to a 1980s childhood could have been a cloying nightmare of cheap nostalgia, but Will Sheff deftly sidesteps the pitfalls as he takes you on a journey through his hometown....

3 days into the end of year retrospective, and thus far manly indie-guitaring is notably absent. The times they are a-changing. Has the world changed or have I changed? Either way, I won’t be writing...

The album might have been too long, but who cares, frankly, when the singles are this good?

Magnificently threatening synths match the dark heart of John Grant as he reflects on the roadside trees from his days growing up in Colorado; trees that he would drive past, headlights shining, as he searched...

I’d like to dedicate this song to whoever was responsible for not granting Beulah a work permit to enter the UK and play a London gig about seven or eight years ago. Good work.