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Articles by Simon Heavisides
Clutter banish cynicism with the aptly named Sugar Rush
So when someone tells you about a new band doing interesting things in a grungy, punk-pop vein, it can be all too easy to roll your eyes and assume that it's all been done before, and better. But sometimes curiosity wins out, you press play, and a song like “GirlVsHeart” hits you full in the face with crashing drums and gleefully thrashing guitar. Instantly you’re hooked and lock into a record that turns out to be a stomping joyride of youthful angst and, along the way, offers up a few surprises.
On Desire Path, Absolutely Yours offer consolation via mellifluous dream-pop
Last year, when Absolutely Yours released the sweetly compelling Mirror Maze, the whisper was that an even better album was not too far behind. Well, the rumours were correct. Desire Path takes everything that was great about Mirror Maze and moves it all up a notch.
Boy Harsher get lean and focused on their best album yet
Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller have faced a succession of gravity-shifting events in recent years, stretching from loss to creative block and then the break-up of their own relationship. Clearly the future of Boy Harsher was in doubt and yet, here we are with the duo's first new music since 2022's soundtrack for The Runner. Desolate cinematic vistas, bleached landscapes, the loneliness of the open road: you can taste the dislocation and the desperation.
Morrissey: Make Up Is A Lie review - blandness hangs over this shake up
I was very young, and it wasn’t something I’d done before or would do again. Incredibly, he sent a witty and charming reply. Perhaps that small act of kindness came from the same place as an archetypal Smiths lyric: “It’s so easy to hate, it takes guts to be gentle and kind.” A lot of muddy water has passed under the bridge since then, and Make Up Is a Lie exists in a very different world. Here, it takes mere seconds for opener “You’re Right, It’s Time” to rail against censorship.
The Wulongs: Videodrome review - daisy fresh
If you’re a bit embarrassed to admit it’s not many, I have good news for you: “Aesop”, the opening song on The Wulongs' debut album Videodrome, will pick you up and whisk you away in less than ten. Sounding like a long-lost My Bloody Valentine track circa just before Isn’t Anything, it’s all frantic strumming and heart-tugging harmonies. After the 2 minutes and 54 seconds have flashed by, only a cold and jaded cynic wouldn’t be smitten by the sheer fresh-faced joyous rush of it all.
Garbage: Let All That We Imagine Be The Light review - righteous rockin'
They were deemed too perfect, probably a ‘fake’ record company creation. Surely it must be the vaguely anonymous guys pulling the creative strings, right? You would have hoped all that would be long behind us and yet when the promo rounds for this new album began the misogyny once again reared its ugly head in those ageist clickbait straplines. Plus ça change. Thankfully for Garbage it’s all fuel to the fire.
Garbage: Let All That We Imagine Be The Light review - righteous rockin'
9 hours ago Hugh Jackman’s ex-wife Deborra-Lee Furness is speaking out for the first time since filing for divorce from the actor. “My heart and compassion goes out to everyone who has traversed the traumatic journey of betrayal,” the 69-year-old Australian actress said in a statement to the Daily Mail Tuesday, …
L.A. Witch: DOGGOD review - dark delight
Forming in 2011, the trio’s two previous albums saw them picking and mixing from a wide range of influences, mastering the sludginess of Sabbath while injecting the raw energy of classic punk/post-punk masters The Wipers. In fact Wipers’ frontman Greg Sage and his wildly underrated guitar slinging genius could be key in understanding L.A. Witch.
The The: Ensoulment Review - personal boundaries | Indie
It’s hard to talk about Ensoulment without marvelling at the gap between it and Johnson’s last long playing transmission, NakedSelf, released an extraordinary quarter of a century ago. At times it felt as if the silence was complete and a line had been drawn under The The’s gripping journey through darkness and light.
Everything Everything: Mountainhead Review - essential humanity | Indie
Unusually he openly acknowledged the challenge of avoiding the creeping inevitability of dilution of artistic purpose and the commonplace slide in quality that gradually envelopes most bands as they move beyond that vital initial spark of inspiration, if indeed they ever had it. He also reminded us that incredibly they’ve been fighting the good fight for seventeen years.
Alex The Astronaut’s joyful How to Grow a Sunflower Under Water channels euphoric liberation
Don’t get me wrong, How to Grow a Sunflower Under Water is no therapy session, but with her second album Sydney’s Alex The Astronaut has managed to successfully distill this feeling and inject it into a series of joyful, sky scraping indie-pop songs. Alex Lynn also gets what T. S.
Metric explore the illusion of control via the thrilling Formentera
But for the relatively rare few who do it’s quite a conundrum. Do you fall back on what you suspect your hardcore fans love or maybe fudge it by releasing an acoustic album or even record some old favourites with an orchestra? Or, for the brave, take that much harder and less travelled route: developing your sound without losing your audience? The well worn music biz maxim of ‘give them more of the same’ while risking boredom seems more likely to pay the bills, but at what cost artistically?
GHUM offer a nine song post punk masterclass with their debut outing Bitter
Three whole traumatic years ago GHUM released their second official EP – the excellent The Coldest Fire – which got pulses racing for something more. Fast forward through a more than mildly demanding period in the world’s history and finally here we are with their debut. No pressure for GHUM then, but clearly good to see they’ve stuck it out through the good and bad times. The question is: does Bitter justify that initial suggestion of future promise?
Hercules and Love Affair’s In Amber is a dark and dramatic rebirth
If there are then In Amber will be an instructive listen. There’s no doubt the fifth album under the Hercules and Love Affair banner marks a break with the past but it makes its move in a way that, while dramatic, feels totally natural and necessary when you consider the subject matter.
Body Type empower and entertain on the coruscating Everything is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising
Of course nowhere is immune and Australia’s Body Type feel that indignation and have zeroed in on the ever present need to deflate some male egos. Their challenge was to create something positive from the carnage rather than rattling out dry and shouty polemic.
Poppy Ajudha’s genre fluid The Power In Us offers powerful therapy in troubled times
We live in difficult times, of that there is no doubt. Looking for positives, this is a reminder that music matters more than ever, whether as a means of pushing for change or simply as a source of succour, empathy and compassion. Into that world comes The Power in Us, the long awaited debut from Poppy Ajudha.
Nicole Faux Naiv creates her own hypnotic dreamworld on Moon Rally
Creating music that can genuinely be described as ‘dreamlike’ is a risky business. Sail too far out into the ether and you can end up with the kind of enervated beauty that quickly turns to tedium. Equally, dreams have a habit of occasionally becoming nightmares and it’s that submerged threat that seems to occasionally lie below the deceptively serene surface of Moon Rally and helps ensure this particular dreamworld never gets boring.
Fieh’s dazzlingly sophisticated Scandi soul shows hidden depths on In the Sun in the Rain
Their first album Cold Water Burning Skin, with slyly syncopated single "Glu" stylishly waging war against the patriarchy, demonstrated firstly that it hasn’t and then politely but firmly showed why even the suggestion is nonsensical. As persuasive as that debut was, In the Sun In the Rain indicates the sophomore slump wasn’t something keeping Fieh tossing and turning at night. The opening title track is a clear statement of intent.
The Quietus | Reviews | The Arctic Flow
Lost You Long Ago finds South Carolina's The Arctic Flow in a lovelorn, wistful mood, finds Simon Heavisides Romantic longing: the emotional fallout may last a lifetime and can seep into your life in a way that makes it almost impossible to escape, reappearing years later as a deep yearning for beauty and meaning, or a manifestation of a profound desire to find a better world. Think the kind of doomed romance that is in the very fabric of those early Smiths songs.
The Quietus | Reviews | Sven Wunder
Elusive Swede Sven Wunder returns with a luxurious dip into the rhythms and sonics of mid-70s library music At first the whole notion of library music can seem horribly unpromising, composers for hire creating music for strictly utilitarian purposes. But the reality was that huge creativity and innovation were often at play. For the curious this repository is pure buried treasure, ripe for reappraisal and mining for samples.
GHUM - The Coldest Fire EP - Soundblab - Soundblab
The flagrant overuse of 'post-punk' as a musical signifier is starting to irritate my increasingly fragile middle-aged temperament... I mean just how much abuse can an already elastic term suffer? But it's not GHUM's fault and in reality, it serves a crude purpose in broadly waving a tattered flag of interest in my direction, leading me to delights like the Coldest Fire e.p. Already this thrillingly intense band are suffering descriptions marking them out as Joy Division indebted.
L I P S - L I P S EP - Soundblab - Soundblab
You know that sweet spot, just at the point where euphoria stands on the precipice before tipping over into sadness? There must be some sort of chemical reaction that occurs as the melancholy starts to inch forward suddenly becoming a tide that engulfs you before you can step back.
Band of Holy Joy - Neon Primitives - Soundblab - Soundblab
If Holy Joy were a business, (as if!) above the door it would proudly state, ‘Band of Holy Joy: Purveyors of Nourishment for the Soul Since 1983’.
Desperate Journalist - In Search of the Miraculous - Soundblab - Soundblab
Miraculous: something unexpected and wonderful, of the nature of a miracle. It's an apt title after all isn't that why we're here? Looking for something that moves or provokes, or maybe even changes your life?
Cyclone Static - From Scratch - Soundblab - Soundblab
“I’ve been taking in the scene, but we’re ready to go now.” With these words James Salerno opens Cyclone Static’s debut album From Scratch, and what can you say? The three-piece band from New Jersey has definitely taken in the punk and hardcore scene of the last 40 years and created an album with influences from 70s punk and 80s hardcore, interspersed with street punk and rock’n’roll – always with melodic undertones.
Sad Lovers and Giants - Mission Creep - Soundblab - Soundblab
Sadly you can’t put your life on hold waiting for a new Sad Lovers and Giants record, this is after all only their second album of new material in over 25 years. What you can do however is take the opportunity to remember again what makes them such a unique and (almost) secret pleasure. Initial signs are reassuringly positive, an intriguingly open-ended album title and a haunting cover.
Killing Joke - O2 Academy, Bristol - Soundblab - Soundblab
To watch Killing Joke take to the stage is like seeing the Mount Rushmore of post punk assemble before your eyes. Masterful drummer who can switch from tribal power to fluid subtlety on a dime, or a penny if you prefer, guitarist carving arcs of controlled noise from the air, always precise never gratuitous, bassist driving beneath it all with just the right amount of space around the notes, and a singer for whom the term is woefully inadequate.
Soft Cell - The O2, London - Soundblab
The premise is simple, playing on the age-old showbiz strapline of the time limited offer, 'For One Night Only', Soft Cell return after 14 years for their apparent last stand. In the age of often justified cynicism, it's already been questioned whether this really is the last time, who knows, it certainly felt like a final celebration. A stadium gig for an archetypal cult band, but still a cult band with multiple genuine hit singles including a million seller.
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