Category: Interviews
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Holly P – Little Window
I’m always telling my students that the 1990s were better. I mean, in almost every way, they were just better. Objectively so. Cars still looked like they were designed with rulers, digital cameras literally had floppy disks in them, you could play GoldenEye on the N64, and there was a lot of gunge on TV.…
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Introducing Keeble
This is a bit of a strange one to write. When I set up this blog I was keen not to cover music made by my friends, mainly because it’s such a minefield and I wanted to keep the two worlds separate. I liked the notion that music I would feature would be either from…
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Theo Bleak – Bad Luck Is Two Yellow Flowers
Sometimes I wonder what point there is in taking time to write about music. Everyone is making it. Nobody is listening to it. The inbox bulges and creaks under the weight of it all. Every now and then, though, something extraordinary makes itself known. Some combination of words flickering away on the screen makes you…
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A conversation with Alfie Firmin
I seem to be posting so rarely now that each time I write something I feel the need to comment apologetically on how infrequent it is. So there it is. Now I can get back to the normal business of throwing as much flowery language as possible into a piece about a musician who has…
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Izzie Yardley – All We Have
2020 was a strange time. It’s easy to reduce all of it down to a banal sentence or two – and it’s amazing how soon we all do, and have done – but, wow, it was pretty weird. Anyway, this post isn’t about all of that. September 2020 was the first time that I heard…
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New EP: Peter Cat – The Magus
Peter Cat arrived on my radar in 2020 with the release of The Saccharine Underground, a fine debut LP falling somewhere in the gap between what I guess you’d call art-rock and art-pop. What I liked most about that record (aside from the sheer quality of the tunes – many of which are inexorably burnt…
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Sunflower Thieves – Lichtenberg Figures
‘You were struck by lightning, walking in the rain to your car / and when you awoke, the lightning left a beautiful scar‘ So begins the immaculate Lichtenberg Figures: Sunflower Thieves’ second single of 2022, arriving hot on the heels of January’s I Don’t Know Why, and November’s Sirens. As well as being a great…
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The Crayon Set – Downer Disco
It is a fact to say that most people haven’t heard of Dublin’s The Crayon Set. It’s also a fact to say that it’s a real shame, as they’re the kind of band that specialise in smart, hook-laden, melancholic pop reminiscent of the likes of Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura, and the Cardigans. Basically they’re…
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Dunebug – Lie to Me
About two months ago I exchanged a few emails with the rather brilliant Chi Limpiroj, otherwise known as the London-based songwriter/purveyor of exquisite dreampop: Dunebug. I’d discovered her music sometime last year and had contacted her regarding the possibility of anything new being on the horizon. As luck would have it, yes, she was finishing…
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New track: Pushpin – Garden Cities of Tomorrow
What a band. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the last year of covering new music it’s that there’s a staggering amount of great music out there just mooching along under the radar. Even so, every once in a while you still find yourself taken aback by the sheer brilliance of something that lands…
I stood up & I said yeah 