Naming your new band is one of the most difficult things to get done. Sure, getting a drummer who is not a latent psychopath intent on imbibing anything that will take him to whole new vast universes of inebriation is tough, but still nowhere near as hard as finding a name that’s original, memorable, or [...]

I was having a chat to a lovely work friend today about The Xx. When I’d suggested them to her last year, she wasn’t keen, being even more of a guitar/bass/drums person than I am. Eventually she relented and has been enjoying it; one of the things that struck her was the late night feel [...]

I can be a right old soppy bugger sometimes. Being reminded of Jenny Lewis’s old band Rilo Kiley one evening last week, I decided to give the opening few tracks of More Adventurous a try on yesterday’s Tube ride to work. And within about three minutes of “Does He Love You?” I was nearly sobbing. [...]

It rained last night, although “rain” isn’t really the right word. A thundering torrent of water, bucketing down by the cubic kilometre, as though the gods had scooped up a fair portion of the eastern Atlantic and dumped it directly onto my part of London. The kind of rain to which a second’s exposure would [...]