These four theatre and classical music obsessed boys from Australia have brought their sporadic array of influences together to cook up something which sounds like The Mars Volta, Queen, The Beatles and Danny Elfman in a battle of who can be more outrageous. The results of which are pretty delicious.
London is bursting at the seams right now with shoegaze bands all fighting for their moment in the NME spotlight and with debut record ‘Out of View’, lofi indie pop quintet, The History of Apple Pie are the latest band to emerge from the fracas as actually any good.
Returning under his own name for a second solo effort, Interpol’s enigmatic frontman reveals a more personal and emotional side on ‘Banks’.
For some artists, inspiration for new material comes from the present, that which they are currently surrounded by and exposed to. For others, looking to the past can be just as inspirationally fulfilling. For Palmer, the production of her second solo record ‘Theatre Is Evil’ was fuelled by the latter – the music of her youth.
‘Maps’ sees Sam Duckworth explore more musical territory, with a more varied and interesting selection of styles, whilst maintaining his talent as a songwriter.
Similar to debut effort ‘Yucca’, frontman Martin Cohen recorded ‘Mostly No’ primarily at home on his own. Sometimes this tended not to work in his favour as he was constantly forced to question the tuning of his guitars (and even his own sanity), having to record and re-record parts of songs for the album several times. But despite this minor setback, Cohen struggled on and the result is a record which is an interesting development of their debut.
In ‘The 2nd Law’, Muse not only hark back to their late 90s/early 00s roots, but back even further to the days of U2, Queen, David Bowie and other 80s rock, pop and funk legends. Besides this, there’s also still a good dose of over the top bombastic Muse which, if you know them well, you can appreciate as glorious disasterpieces in their own epically awful way (yes, I’m talking about ‘Survival’, the song everyone loves to hate).
Here’s a track by track review of my thoughts on Muse’s most ambitious (but not their best) album to date.
In this day and age, people often forget that simplicity is an art form in itself. They forget that you need not spend your life savings on expensive recording studios and critically acclaimed producers to make good music. In turn, Randolph’s Leap use this as their raison d’être.
As far as experimental, atmospheric instrumental music goes, London based 6-piece Rumour Cubes seem to have got it just right on their new album ‘The Narrow State’.
If you haven’t already heard of Alabama Shakes, it is almost guaranteed that you will soon. This highly anticipated debut album from Alabama’s soulful rock and roll four piece is powerfully dynamic, from its intimate a cappella moments to its full on rock and roll knock outs.
