For all the talk of the new music business model and paradigm shifts and other such flimflammery, it’s lovely to see the business pulling out the old tricks to sell a new record. Namely, a band consisting of two attractive ladies, sisters no less, being sold apparently entirely on their attractiveness. They’ve been knocking around [...]

Last night, I had a very strange dream. In amongst a night out in my hometown wearing a Star Trek t-shirt, driving through a crowd of tourists in my car, and a fridge full of bacon, was a video for Drake’s new song, “Dreams Money Can Buy”, in which he dances wearing women’s clothes (a [...]

I can’t say that I particularly liked Bon Iver’s debut album. Gave it a good few goes, but something in the conceit of Mr Iver1 holing himself up in a remote shack to get over his oh-so-broken heart got on my nerves. But, on the flip side, I rather liked Volcano Choir, especially “Island, IS”. [...]

Pootling around the web first thing this morning, whilst having a quick break from work (working from home is wonderful from time to time), and nursing the sort of hangover you get when you go drinking with some good work buddies and a vendor who who decided that alcohol poisoning was a perfectly valid sales [...]

Cumbria’s Wild Beasts made quite a splash a few years back, variously described as “Epic”, “Proggy”, or “Epically Proggy”. Much was made of singer Hayden Thorpe’s challenging vocals, the kind of effortful falsetto that makes you think that he’s trying just that little bit too hard to Emote. Jeff Buckley or Andrew Montgomery he’s not. [...]