Hailing from Fargo, North Dakota, Secret Cities is a band that was born from the minds of a pair of 15 year-olds at band camp who discovered a shared love of psychedelica. Fast forward to 2010, and the now-trio are about to release their debut album Pink Graffiti. Listed by the influential music site Stereogum as one of their bands to watch in 2010, Secret Cities establish themselves with this album as something quite different but phenomenally good. […]
Take one part growing up in Idaho, add a dash of Portland, Oregon, and mix together with a healthy dose of Mississippi living. This is the recipe that’s led to the creation of the debut full-length album from Johnny Bertram and his band The Golden Bicycles. Blending together the indie folk-rock sounds of the Pacific Northwest with the southern country rock roots of the Mississippi, Days That Passed is a rocking good album. […]
It seems quite often in the music industry that random coincidence leads to the creation of a successful collaboration or composition. In 2006, alternative rock darling KatieJane Garside (QueenAdreena, Daisy Chainsaw) discovered guitarist Chris Whittingham busking in the London Underground, and was immediately drawn to him. Together, they formed Ruby Throat and immediately started producing their distinct brand of alt-folk music and eventually releasing their debut The Ventriloquist. In late 2009, they released their sophomore album out from a black cloud came a bird, named after a fatal plane crash that Garside witnessed in Nepal. […]
Brooklyn-based Slow Six have their feet planted firmly as pioneers in the classical crossover camp. Successfully combining classical music with rock, they create a sound that other artists strive, but can not attain to the same level. Originally playing twenty-minute electro-acoustic scores to stunned audiences in New York in the late Nineties, they have helped redefine what is possible when crossing the genres. Now, with their new album Tomorrow Becomes You, they return to their experimental rock roots and deliver a mesmerising post-rockesque experience. […]
Haunting, ethereal, angelic, dark, surreal, peaceful… these are some of the words that easily describe the musical offerings of the London-based duo, Smoke Fairies. With music that more than fits their name, Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire deliver music that swirls and drifts like wisps of smoke, and has a certain fey quality. This duo have slowly been making a name for themselves and now, with their debut album Ghosts, they look set to start taking the world by storm. […]
Jen Gloeckner would like to take you on a journey. Not to any place on the physical plane, but rather on a surreal trip through her dreams. The land of sleep is where Gloeckner finds artistic inspiration, and she lays it out for her listeners in a multi-faceted vision. Recorded in an upstairs bedroom converted into a studio, her sophomore album Mouth of Mars is another visit to the moods and images from her dreams, and it’s well worth sticking around to experience the waves of her subconscious wash over you. […]
Jen Olive is a singer/songwriter from Albuquerque who has spent much of her career in relative anonymity. Playing with some bands early on and then releasing some low-key, self-released recordings under different names as a solo artist, she managed to maintain what she calls her “an attachment to anonymity”. However, in mid-2007, a friend suggested she send a CD to Andy Partridge (of XTC fame). He called her up a month later and, three years later, we have her “official” debut album Warm Robot being released under Partridge’s Ape House label. […]
When I first read a press release that described The Gilded Palace of Sin as “the kind of house band that would play on HBO’s Deadwood”, I was intrigued. For a band to be compared to such a wild and gritty TV series, one immediately assumes the band to be of a fairly dark nature and ambitiously willing to go beyond conventional barriers. Upon listening to their debut album You Break Our Hearts, We’ll Tear Yours Out, one is not disappointed. Channelling the artistic visions of Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone, this trio brings us an album that could easily be the soundtrack to a Tarantino or Rodriguez Western. […]
With a musical collaboration as prolific as MV & EE, it’s somewhat strange not to have heard of them before now. This Vermont pair have worked with a number of artists to accumulate over 30 releases over the past decade, and now bring us their fourth major release Barn Nova under Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label. Combining Indian raga-style composition with Appalachian folk and post-psychedelic electrical experimentalism, Matt Valentine and Erika Elder take the listener on a journey through an extraordinary and haunting soundscape. […]
Standard Fare may be named after a sign spotted on a bus, but their effect is anything but pedestrian. Sounding like the perky younger siblings of the Arctic Monkeys, the power trio’s uncomplicated lyrics of life and infectious beats make for a rollicking good time, and now Emma Kupa, Danny How, and Andy Beswick are set to release their debut album. Recorded in six days with an indie aesthetic that would have made John Peel proud, the album is named for a formative period in the band’s development when they travelled across the channel to play at a festival in Noyelles Sous Lens, France. “It was where we felt our sound came together,” says How, and the collection of songs they were playing became The Noyelle Beat. […]
