Album Review: Ex Libras

Album Review: Ex Libras
Album: Suite(s)
Label: Wirebird

Last year James May, the fuddy-duddy oddball who cannot comprehend the concept of women, from Top Gear published a book. ‘James May’s Magnificent Machines: How Men in Sheds Changed Our Lives’ has a pretty solid five star rating on Amazon, with praise from four reviewers who also struggle with the idea of breasts.

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Album Review: Crazy Arm

Album Review: Crazy Arm
Album: Born To Ruin
Label: Xtra Mile

Heralded by Mr UK Superstar himself, HRH Frank Turner, Crazy Arm burst onto the Xtra Mile label with a debut that sounds like a barn-storming country hoedown clashing gloriously with mohawks, piercings and everything else punk is remembered for.

Album Review: You’re Smiling Now But We’ll Turn Into Demons

Album Review: You’re Smiling Now But We’ll Turn Into Demons
Album: Contact High Wit Da Demons
Label: Function

Sounding like the luscious, gloopy dregs of a heavy comedown, ‘Contact High’ is a record that instantly sounds familiar, but still has enough tricks up its sleeve to confound expectations.

Album Review: Them Crooked Vultures

Album Review: Them Crooked Vultures
Album: Them Crooked Vultures
Label: Sony

The most hotly anticipated album this year? The sheer fervour of excitement that surrounded the mysterious getting together of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones got more knickers in a twist than a public execution of Gary Glitter ever could. But is it any good?

Album Review: Deaf Havana

Album Review: Deaf Havana
Album: Meet Me Halfway, At Least
Label: A Wolf At Your Door

It’s been a pretty sharpish turnaround for the Norfolk chaps in Deaf Havana. It only seems a while ago that this very website was lavishing undulated praise upon their energetic debut EP It’s Called the Easy Life. So, hopefully Deaf Havana has recorded a full length that won’t let this reviewer down, and maybe even build on their impressive foundations.

Album Review: Pelican

Album Review: Pelican
Album: What We All Come To Need
Label: Southern Lord

What is it that Pelican are suggesting we all need? Do we really need another post-rock band spewing forth their instrumental odes to whatever hippy freakfest is in season at the moment? Or are they talking about themselves, and admitting that to stand out amongst this gaggle of identikit no-vocal bands you need… vocals? Wait; there are vocals on a Pelican album? Fucking hell, they’ve actually tried something new!

Album Review: Pissed Jeans

Album Review: Pissed Jeans
Album: King Of Jeans
Label: Sub Pop

King Of Jeans is an incoherent, drunken mess of an album; stumbling through the room like the 15 year-old girl who snuck into the party and drank half a bottle of that green stuff that no one else dared to touch, borderline undecided whether she wants to vomit, shit herself or just give in to all moral and personal consequences and do both. It is the sound of indignity, shame and inconsolable misery. And it’s absolutely bloody phenomenal.