I’m someone who sees the career of The White Stripes split into three separate chunks. Their first two albums, a self-titled and De Stijl, were very raw, very bluesy, and sometimes quite uncompromising. Their last two albums, the experimental Get Behind Me Satan and Icky Thump, were a band post-mainstream breakthrough. However, their real moment [...]
It’s only been three months since the Arctic Monkeys unleashed Humbug on the general public but there may already be plans to record a follow-up very soon. Matt Helders, the band’s drummer, has said that talk of recording sessions have begun but it’ll be a bit of time before they eventually commit to tape as [...]
I’m trying to do this as quickly as I can before the inevitable YouTube bots take the video down. Ray Davies appeared on Letterman last night to promote The Kinks Choral Collection and performed an absolutely sublime version of You Really Got Me, a song that is unbelievably 45 years old and still as good [...]
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Is This It by The Strokes was named as the album of the decade by the NME. In fact, if you buy this week’s anniversary edition, you’ll find an essay style feature about The Strokes’ influence on music in this decade and why they’re so important. The [...]
The new NME is out tomorrow and in it you will see its inevitable albums of the decade feature. The winning album in their poll, conducted with votes not just from their writers but other industry folk, is The Strokes‘ debut album, Is This It. It’s unsurprising, as are other entries in the top 10, [...]
Following on from last weeks’ news that Hot Chip are to release their fourth album, One Life Stand, next February, the band have now put out a tracklisting for it. It features ten new songs, with the drumming of The Invisible’s Leo Taylor, plus Charles Hayward of ’70s prog-rockers This Heat. The running order is:Thieves [...]
Shockingly, this is the fifth time I’ve seen Patrick Wolf this year and this will probably be the last for a while. In what can only be assumed to be his swansong show for The Bachelor (save for some dates in Asia and Australia), the London Palladium played host to what was undoubtedly his biggest [...]
Oh Muse, you skyscraping (literally) three-piece you. My ninth time seeing the band was the first of their two night stay at the O2 Arena in London as they round up the UK leg of The Resistance Tour.When bands play shows at this level, you expect to see two things in a setlist. You expect [...]
I’ve had a very love/hate relationship with Biffy Clyro. Some albums have impressed me hugely like the breathtakingly loud and complex (in places) Infinity Land, whilst some have just left me feeling cold like their most recent effort, Puzzle. Only Revolutions is the band’s fifth album and quite possibly their bid for the big time. [...]
After a mammoth four year wait for Hombre Lobo, we have only have to wait a few months for End Times, the next Eels album. The 18th January is the release date for an album that is said to be much quieter and more stripped back than past albums, as E recorded all the instruments [...]
Last night, Mew took to the stage at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London to continue their European tour in promotion of recent albums, No More Stories… Unusually for a venue like the Shepherds Bush Empire, the sound was a bit off for the first few songs but halfway through The Zookeeper’s Boy it picked [...]
Hot Chip have announced the details of is fourth album release. One Life Stand will be released on the 8th February next year and is their follow up to the brilliant 2008 effort Made In The Dark. The album will again be released through Parlophone Records and the press release describes it as the band’s [...]
To say this album has been highly anticipated might be understating things. Since the trio of Josh Homme, John Paul Jones, and Dave Grohl teamed up officially in the summer as Them Crooked Vultures, they’ve played secret gigs around Europe and have just come off the back of a proper US tour. Touring was fine [...]
The Arctic Monkeys are about to embark on a nationwide arena tour. I wasn’t that impressed by their performance at Reading but I think they’d be better in an arena setting, especially after they revealed how they’ve been getting inspiration to the NME:I’d never been to a gig in an arena. But recently, knowing we’ve [...]
There’ll be a more professional review of this Röyksopp gig for Sonic Dice (alongside some words about support act James Yuill), but I’ll write some words about it here too. It’s worth saying that this gig was pretty phenomenal. When I was looking down at the crowd from my seating position, which was the side [...]
To say that Undisclosed Desires by Muse isn’t my favourite song from The Resistance would be understating things. I think it’s a poor rip-off of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy The Silence and the lyrics sung by Matt Bellamy make me shudder in horror. Unsurprisingly, it’s being released as a single. Even more unsurprisingly, it’s not got [...]
Dreamy shoegazers Asobi Seksu are set to release a new album of acoustic takes on songs from their back catalogue. Acoustic At Olympic Studios gets released on the 16th November and is one of the last albums ever to be recorded at the London recording studio before it was closed. Vocalist Yuki Chikudate and guitarist [...]
It was a refreshing October evening in Guildford as I made my way to the Boileroom for a gig headlined by Kill It Kid (which I reviewed for Sonic Dice). There two pretty interesting support artists. One of them was the part-Scottish, part-Chicago Sparrow & The Workshop, whom I might write about at a future [...]
It was inevitable that after the success of their just-finished UK arena tour that we’d get this kind of announcement but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exciting. Green Day will be playing two stadium gigs next year in June. The two dates will be at Wembley Stadium in London on the 19th June and [...]
Vampire Weekend are set to return to the UK in February next year for a tour. The band will release their, arguably already insanely hyped, second album Control on the 11th January and these dates will support that album. This run of dates includes some of the band’s biggest headlining shows in the UK so [...]
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