The Horrors

If there's something to take away from this year's Isle of Wight Festival, it's probably sunburn. Unlike the mud bath of two years ago, 2014 will be remembered for serving up one of the hottest weekends I can remember for a festival, along with some crowd-pleasing performances. While not every act managed to capture their moment in the sun, all the major names delivered in spades.

But it wasn't just the music that made the weekend for many; a real sense of celebration seemed to erupt across the site. Partly fuelled by anticipation over the World Cup and partly because of the good weather, thousands of smiling faces could be seen everywhere. Sunflowers seemed to be an essential festival accessory and many opted for as few clothes as possible with t-shirts looking like they'd gone out of fashion altogether. I've even had to make a note in my diary that it's international flip-flop day on June 20th, just one of the many things I learnt around Seaclose Park this year.

The highlight of Friday afternoon should have really been local boy Tom Odell on the main stage. But his piano led ballads took some time to win the crowd over despite his number 1 album 'Long Way Down'. By the time he'd finished though, the reaction showed that he'd justified his place on the main stage billing.

Continue reading: Isle of Wight Festival 2014 Review

On paper, The Horrors are flying. Their second album 'Primary Colors' was a total change in direction for the band but not in a way that they sold their souls and went all commercial. Instead, The Horrors channeled their raw energy and came up with a great second album. This gained the band a following but the best was still yet to come, in the shape of their third album, making it third time lucky with 'Skiing'. It was as if the guys hit gold!

Continue reading: The Horrors, Rock City, Nottingham Live Review

As one-day music festivals go, London's Field Day stands out from the crowd as being the most ambitious and forward-thinking certainly in terms of its booking policy. Concentrating on the more hip end of the spectrum along with legendary artists of yore, the Eat Your Own Ears curated event has hosted the likes of Wild Beasts, Laura Marling, Foals, The Horrors and Bat For Lashes at very early stages in their artistic development since its inaugural bash in 2007. Situated in Victoria Park just a stones throw away from Mile End tube station in the capital's east side, this year has seen Field Day expand its number of stages to seven, with the Do You Come Here Often? and joint venture between the Lock Tavern and Shacklewell Arms each hosting line-ups for the first time.

Continue reading: Field Day, Victoria Park, London. 6th August 2011 Live Review

As musical transformations from archetypical sinners to all-encompassing saints go, the inexplicable rise of The Horrors reads like an excerpt from a Hans Christian Anderson fairytale. Castigated and dismissed just four years ago as a cartoon garage band, a London scene in-joke whose first release 'Strange House' painted them as little more than a second rate Hives. Even the live show back then seemed to focus around several giant gimmicks; singer Faris Badwan's insistence on jumping in the crowd and smearing audience members with black ink, (then) keyboard player Rhys "Spider" Webb's spooky on-stage manoeuvres, and a penchant for Screaming Lord Sutch covers. It wasn't big, clever or pretty. At times fairly cringeworthy, and yet behind the façades the band always seemed capable of talking a god game, not to mention highlighting the fact each one of them owned a remarkable depth of records in their respective collections in the pages and accompanying compilation CDs of the numerous fanzines they put out like 'Horror Asparagus Stories' and 'Sounds From Outer Space'.

Continue reading: The Horrors, Skying Album Review