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?
Archive for August, 2010
30 Aug
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. Continue reading
28 Aug
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… Continue reading
27 Aug
ALBUMS OF THE NOUGHTIES: #20-15
IT’S NOT too late for an Albums of the ’00s post, is it? Continue reading
26 Aug
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 21st 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.
24 Aug
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.”
23 Aug
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. Continue reading
22 Aug
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.
Recent Comments