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Latest Reviews

28-07-2010 Wavves – King of the Beach

There could hardly be a more apt sounding death knell for lo-fi indie garage than Nathan Williams’ infantile pop farts. Both the genre and Wavves itself have been due a backlash for some time now.

27-07-2010 M.I.A. – /\/\ /\ Y /\

In another universe, parallel to ours but not too distant, Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam is the pivotal character in Pulp’s ‘Common People’.

27-07-2010 Sleigh Bells – Treats

Everyone seems to hear something different in the kind of piercing racket that only the pairing of a former hardcore guitarist and an ex-girl group singer could produce

27-07-2010 Devo – Something for Everybody

The album rolls back the years and sates Devo-addicts’ cravings for more of the same. The lack of artistic progression is inevitable. After all, de-evolution is real…

26-04-2010 The Black Keys – Brothers

There’s no reason why the soul or spirit of a recording studio should rub off on people who record there (…)

Reviews

Queens of British Pop, Episode 1 / BBC1

A pat on the back for Auntie for commissioning this enlightening and entertaining documentary series, especially when most music coverage on television at the moment is vapid, cashing in on an obsession with seeing lacklustre bands inadvertently promoting rubbish beer and mobile phones. The question goes begging, why so long? Historical music documentaries are almost bound by default to include the usual suspects – The Who, Stones, Hendrix, Beatles – and while two of that list are unavoidably mentioned in passing here, this one-hour film refreshingly focuses on seminal artists of the fairer sex.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Quincy Jones: The Many Lives of Q, BBC4

Anyone with a passing interest in music knows that Quincy Jones is a major player in the biz, but people who tell you they know everything about his career are bare-faced liars. There are friends of Quincy’s interviewed in this doc who have known him all his life, and not even they’ve managed to fully grasp quite what a titan he is.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Later Live… with Jools Holland BBC2

No one’s suggesting anyone brings back The Old Grey Whistle Test, but if it’s accepted that there’s a dearth of decent music programmes on the TV, why did they have to give Jools Holland another slot? It seems music shows on the box only fall into two categories: the zany, epileptic fit-inducing sort for the yoof, presented by some cunt from Wales in association with a friggin’ phone company, and the old bugger ‘real’ music kind, presented by… Jools Holland. Everyone’s a loser. On Later…, bands you want to see, play like their dad said it was a good idea, and anyone doing anything in front a hair gel logo looks like a grease ball.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Pop! What Is It Good For? BBC4

Very few gigs in January, so clever of the bods at BBC4 to schedule an absolute barrage of music programmes, many of which were built upon the premise that pop music is something to be taken seriously. We know that, but it does seem like there’s quite a recent trend in discussing the supposedly throwaway within an intellectual context, probably because people who grew up in the fifties/sixties when pop exploded are now running the TV stations.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

What Happened to Michael Jackson? Channel 4

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Trailers for this programme suggested it was going to tackle what happened to Wacko after he walked free from the fiddling charges – an intriguing subject for anyone who got caught up in the spectacle of the court case and watched him zoom off in a motorcade. We knew he’d spent some time in the Arab world and we knew there was talk of a Vegas comeback, but pretty much it seemed like he’d dropped out and was running away from paying off his colossal debts.

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Popularity: unranked [?]