ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE ‘EP TIPS’ POSTS

YES, IT’S another one of those posts. Well, to paraphrase The Cranberries (sorry. I’m really sorry), everybody else is doing it, so why can’t I?

HOT CHIP: DEEPLY DIPPY

Originally published in The Irish Times, February 6th 2010

STANDING ON the doorstep of his London flat, phone pressed tightly to his ear as early morning traffic screeches past, Hot Chip’s Owen Clarke is trying to ignore the light dusting of snow that’s falling on his shoulders. He’s far too preoccupied with the more important things in life, like his band’s new album. One Life Stand has been two years in the making, after all; it comes on the back of their longest period of downtime since they “blew up”, as bloggers might put it, with their dinky dancefloor-filling full-length The Warning in 2006. But it’s not just that, Clarke says.

I BLOODY LOVE THIS SONG…

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO… LIAM LYNCH?

Whatever happened to Liam Lynch? You know, the ‘United States of Whatever’ guy, released that one single and accompanying album in 2003 and then apparently disappeared from the face of Planet Music…

ALBUMS OF THE NOUGHTIES: #20-15

IT’S NOT too late for an Albums of the ’00s post, is it?

JÓNSI: GET UP AND GO

Originally published in AU magazine, March 2010

LET’S BE frank for just a moment. When you think of Sigur Rós, arguably one of the most cerebral bands of the 21^st century – a band whom the word ‘ethereal’ was seemingly devised solely to describe – you don’t necessarily expect them to be captivating conversationalists. Harsh? Well, try sticking ‘Sigur Rós Radio Interview Disaster’ into Google, witness the stultifyingly awkward ‘discussion’ that followed on NPR in 2007, bear in mind that this is a band who regularly sing in a made-up language, and then tell us that you’d like to be stuck in an elevator with them for an hour.

JENS LEKMAN: Q&A

Originally published in The Irish Times, July 30th 2010

You’re based in Australia now, but you return to your home city of Gothenburg every summer…

Yes, the Swedish summer is just like summer should be – short and full of expectation. It’s not like the Australian summer. That’s just like a nagging old couple. It just goes on for too long – you get sick of it. It’s like, ‘Oh, sunshine? Again?’

HOLY FUCK: CELESTIAL BLISS

Originally published in AU Magazine, May 2010

BRIAN BORCHERDT IS single-handedly destroying his band’s reputation as a carefully-managed, well-oiled and complex music-making machine. “Rehearse?,” he laughs down a phone line from New York City. “Nah, we don’t really rehearse.”

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO… TOM VEK?

WHATEVER HAPPENED to Tom Vek? I wore the arse-end out of ‘We Have Sound’ (2005) when it came out, saw the bloke twice in Whelan’s within the space of a year (still one of the best bands I’ve ever seen at that venue), and then he seemed to disappear from the face of the planet.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND: SO LONG, SUCKERS

Originally published in Hot Press, July 2008

IT’S LATE afternoon, and Vampire Weekend have just finished soundchecking for their highly-anticipated set at Brighton’s Great Escape festival. Subsequently drained by the stifling venue’s under-active air conditioning system, the band wearily recline on the battered sofas of their dressing room – the idea of yet another enthusiastic journalist demanding yet another interview evidently unappealing.