The Essex brothers on the attack, and just because they admire Benjamin Britten doesn’t mean they like Mozart.
Latest Features
These New Puritans
The xx
Crosses To Bear: Having the intense intimacy of their music exposed has already resulted in the loss of a member.
Richard Hawley
Ancient Lights: We live in dark times, but there’s hope for us yet, according to the Sheffield songwriter.
Mapei
My Prerogative Socrates: The Swedish/American rapper is destined to put herself on the map in a big way, when’s she ready.
Richard Hell
Alex Denney asks the proto-punk why he ‘repaired’ his Destiny Street album.
Features
Dream On
Glasvegas are shooting a seven with every shot
Fish’n’Chips Guy
Tricky Comes Home
Chi-Town Debutante
As hip hop cries out for a new female voice, Chicago MC Kid Sister is proving herself to be bang on the pro nail.
Rentokiller
Danger Mouse scurries ever upwards.
Blue Murder
Things didn’t look especially pretty for The Kills after their second album, No Wow, came out in 2005. The idea behind it – to write and record the whole damn thing in just three weeks – could have worked out great for them and their stripped-down, keep-it-simple aesthetic, but didn’t. Not really. The record was by no means a flop… it’s more that it had little of the crunch and sting of their debut, Keep On Your Mean Side.
Giddy Up!
Backstage at Amsterdam’s Paradiso venue, Foals’ 21-year-old singer-guitarist Yannis Philippakis is chain-smoking cigarettes, swatting away the flies that infest the cramped dressing room, struggling with an untimely cold he’s picked up, wondering when his tour manager’s going to bring him the food he ordered, and telling me about Karpathos in Greece, where he lived until he was seven and where his dad (and brother) still live.
Levitate Me
Charles Thompson IV says here that “there is no tour or record – it’s all one big giant tour, and it’s all one big giant record”, but the longer he goes on, the easier it is to identify patterns in his life as a musician. There’s 1986 to 1993 when, as Black Francis, he fronted the greatest American alternative rock band of the age, the Pixies; the 10-year period after when he became Frank Black and released nine solo albums, songs from which were recently collected together on a compilation, 93-03; the Pixies reunion years of 2003 to early 2007; and a new era begins with his new album, Bluefinger. For that, he’s not only left behind the gently rolling Nashville sound of his last two albums (Honeycomb and Fast Man, Raider Man), he’s unexpectedly resurrected Black Francis.
