No Broadcast – The Common Thread (Album Review)
No Broadcast Their fourth album The Common Thread is awash in floating, dreamy ambient pop. Multi-layered like a Glass Onion, and the hooks come camouflaged in velvet.
Album Reviews
Alison Goldfrapp – The Love Invention (Skint/BMG) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Alison Goldfrapp, as one half of electro-pop duo Goldfrapp, has released seven albums that have traversed across multiple genres including glam, folk, dance, disco and trip-hop, producing some memorable dancefloor bangers.
Pacific Avenue – Flowers (BMG) (Album Review) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Pacific Avenue, a shoal of friends originating in 2017 from a NSW idyllic coastal surf town of Gerringong, focussed around two failed buskers heavily influenced by their contemporary Australian Indie Rock sound, the likes of Jet, Powderfinger and Silverchair, rooted in the history of The Rolling Stones, The Stooges and not forgetting Aussie past heavyweights […]
Dictaphone Blues – Greetings from Glen Eden (EP Review) ⭐⭐⭐
Dictaphone Blues is multi-instrumentalist Edward Castelow’s main vehicle for his retro rock’n’roll. He describes Greetings from Glen Eden as a throw-back to the Nineties dirty garage guitar sound.
Tiny Ruins – Ceremony (Ursa Minor) (Album Review) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tiny Ruins has released Ceremony, 11 songs that are “set on the shores of Tāmaki Makaurau’s Manukau Harbour, known to locals as Old Murky,” or so the PR tells me.
The Damned – Darkadelic (Ear Music) Album Review ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Damned, The Stranglers, and The Buzzcocks are, or were, all punk rock survivors because of their ability to reinvent themselves, to tangent onto differing musical paths and stay relevant to not just their fans, but to also hook into greater masses.
The National – First Two Pages of Frankenstein (4AD): Album Review ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The National The title of their ninth studio album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein alerts us to their literary and art-as-rock’n’roll sensibilities. This aligns them with Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen. And Nick Cave if you insist.
Josh Ritter Spectral Lines (Thirty Tigers) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Josh Ritter has been banging around, making decent records since 1999. But on this, his 11 studio record, Ritter has struck gold.
Rickie Lee Jones – Pieces of Treasure (BMG) Album Review ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rickie Lee Jones’ new album is Pieces of Treasure and the first impression is one of warmth and comfortable familiarity. She sounds like she is inhabiting Billie Holiday to the point she is present in both flesh and spirit.
Terrible Sons – The Raft Is Not The Shore (Nettwerk) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Raft Is Not The Shore is the exquisite debut album from the ironically-named Terrible Sons (Lauren (L.A Mitchell) and Matt Barus). Neither male children nor anything terrible is involved. Rather, beauty, hope and the essential goodness of human relationships strongly shine through this album.