Author: Andy Peterson Page 7
Harper Simon - Division Street Album Review
You often wonder, staring through the frosty shop window of an outsider's perspective, how it must work for the sons and daughters of famous musicians. Harper Simon is the offspring of none other than Paul...
Review posted on 29th April 2013
Night Works - Urban Heat Island Album Review
Gabriel Stebbings - the Urban Heat Island moniker remains unexplained - left Metronomy in 2009, smack bang between their awkward but evolutionary second album Nights Out and before their quixotic third, The English Riviera, turned...
Review posted on 22nd April 2013
John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts Album Review
John Grant's last album Queen of Denmark represented an echo of a phenomenon rarely seen these days; a slow burning, word-of-mouth success that eventually piled up mentions in the 2010's release of the year polls...
Review posted on 27th March 2013
Vondelpark - Seabed Album Review
The most enticing thing about music is that very occasionally a band can emerge from pupation in a newly assumed form, one so far away from the original that the change almost constitutes a minor...
Review posted on 18th March 2013
Husky Rescue - Deep Forest Green EP Review
Perhaps for Husky Rescue front man Marko Nyberg things haven't all been plain sailing since the band's 2010 release Ship of Light; that he returns two years later in a three piece with two new...
Review posted on 18th March 2013
Michele Stodart - Wide-eyed Crossing Album Review
One of the fringe benefits of being in an eternally nerdy group like The Magic Numbers is that their lack of rock n' roll antics means their gelt is spent on something more rational than...
Review posted on 4th March 2013
Dionne Warwick - A Celebratory 50th Anniversary Album Review
What feels like a squillion years ago in that fuzzy pre-history before MTV, they had an acronym for music like this, songs which were tailored for audiences which were generally considered less receptive to new...
Review posted on 25th February 2013
Applescal - Dreaming In Key Album Review
Pascal Terstappen (AKA Applescal - having a pseudo cryptic moniker in electronic music circles is a bit like breathing) is an Amsterdam native who's been building his artistic reputation in a gauche, slightly haphazard...
Review posted on 19th February 2013
Herve - The Art of Disappearing Album Review
And then there are the ones who're just trying too hard. Josh "Herve" Harvey leads the chaotic life of a producer, DJ, remixer and is also one half of The Count & Sinden, whose album...
Review posted on 11th February 2013
Sinkane - Mars Album Review
As someone who writes a bit about music, I'm entitled to an opinion about it and you can choose to disagree. I reckon 2012 was a massively underwhelming year for the popular art form, full...
Review posted on 22nd January 2013
The Avett Brothers - The Carpenter Album Review
The Avett Brothers last album, 2009's I and Love and You, was one that brought them into the mass consciousness on both sides of the Atlantic; testimony to the kind of career endurance and character...
Review posted on 21st January 2013
Merz - No Compass Will Find Home Album Review
On a personal note, my first ever album review for Contact Music was Merz - aka Conrad Lambert - 2008 in the guise of his release Moi Et Mon Camion. It's fair to say that...
Review posted on 10th January 2013
Various Artists - Montreal Bass Culture Vol. 1 Album Review
Imitation: that sincerest form of flattery, or so they say. Normally, this means that the content referred to is some pale facsimile of the original, like but on a bad day. So painfully underground...
Review posted on 4th January 2013
Letherette - Featurette EP Review
It's always an amazing feeling to have one of those "I remember when I first heard that tune" moments. And even though the first time I heard Letherette was a few days ago, and in...
Review posted on 20th December 2012
Passion Pit - Gossamer Album Review
A bit like Arthur and Marilyn, there's always that lurking suspicion that being clever and being at the nub of pop culture - or being an icon in its highly transient field of dreams -...
Review posted on 17th December 2012
Pinch - MIA 2006-2010 Album Review
It feels weird calling music old skool when it's little more than two or three years in the can, but dubstep's blitzkrieg colonisation of popular culture means that anybody taking even a glance backwards can...
Review posted on 10th December 2012
Andy Burrows - Company Album Review
You have to wonder who the happier man is - Johnny Borrell, still trying to drag a fourth album out of the embers of the Razorlight franchise this far on from the poorly received Slipway...
Review posted on 4th December 2012
Kreayshawn - Somethin' Bout Kreay Album Review
"I'm a bad girl, and you like that", purrs Kreayshawn during BFF (Bestfriend) to an unspecified hottie: she isn't kidding. After a youth spent shipping between expulsions from various Oakland, California schools, Natassia Gail...
Review posted on 19th November 2012
The Orb featuring Lee 'Scratch' Perry - The Observer In The Star House Album Review
On the face of it, a collaboration between ambient techno pioneers The Orb - these days in reality only Alex Patterson - and Lee "Scratch" Perry sounds like a recipe for complete joy. The Jamaican's...
Review posted on 19th November 2012
Two Fingers - Stunt Rhythms Album Review
Maybe it's the number of shots of Bombay Sapphire he likes straight up, or it might even be a symbolic temporary wave towards his past career, but on the basis of Stunt Rhythms, Amon Tobin's...
Review posted on 8th November 2012
Pop Levi - Medicine Album Review
Pop Levi (Jonathan James Levi to his friends) caused more than a few ripples of excitement with the release of his début album The Return To Form Black Magick Party in 2007. Swimming very...
Review posted on 6th November 2012
Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance Album Review
Few bands can have been mocked more than Judas Priest (Bill Hicks did a particularly fine job on Relentless). Hindsight though has proven to be on the side of Rob Halford and friends who, in...
Review posted on 26th October 2012
Scouting For Girls - The Light Between Us Album Review
Prejudice? In some quarters even mentioning the words 'Scouting' 'For' and 'Girls' in the same breath can result in an immediate and sustained campaign by total strangers to out you as a complete nobber. There...
Review posted on 11th October 2012
Kitsune - Kitsune Maison Compilation 14: The Tenth Anniversary Issue Album Review
Parisian fashion house/label celebrate ten years of releasing music with a fresh new compilation of their current cause celebre. Surely only a groaty music hack could try and spoil that party. Well....Let's share a little...
Review posted on 8th October 2012
Efterklang - Piramida Album Review
You assume that a band with a name like Efterklang are some sort of hirsute German krautrockers, obsessed with their own dictatorial minimalism. In fact, the now reduced trio of Casper Clausen, Mads Brauer and...
Review posted on 1st October 2012
Huey And The New Yorkers - Say It To My Face Album Review
The late Robert Palmer didn't say it first, but he probably said it best; some guys have all the luck. Huey Morgan must wake up feeling like he has a back garden full of four...
Review posted on 1st October 2012
Lianne La Havas - Is Your Love Big Enough Album Review
A conveyor belt it may be but, as Adele has found to her perpetual benefit, we British are suckers for a song. The voices may change, but the millions of dewy-eyed talent show watchers are...
Review posted on 25th September 2012
Matthew Dear - Beams
Art and Pop have always made for uneasy comrades; the mass communication industries typically frown on Dadaist in jokes, aggressively distracting installations and other confusing manifestos. Before I hear y'all say Lady Gaga, we're aware...
Review posted on 18th September 2012
Lightships - Electric Cables
Ah, 'Solo projects'; the industry's shorthand cliché which performers use when they're desperately trying to escape their host organism - a term that, on many occasions, is the immediate precursor to 'Musical differences'. Lightships is...
Review posted on 12th September 2012
Teengirl Fantasy - Tracer
Sometimes you just have to go with gut feel. It would be easy to categorise Teengirl Fantasy (aka production duo Logan Takahashi and Nick Weiss) as a triumph of technology over substance, another faceless pair...
Review posted on 30th August 2012
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