Maxïmo Park, London Brixton Academy

Maxïmo Park's Paul Smith

April 27, 2009

If you’re expecting a review in the typical sense, take a deep breath and forget about it.

Yesterday I realised that this Brixton Academy show makes for the 10th time I have seen this clearly dearly beloved Teesside five-piece live. Over a five-year period starting with a Futureheads support slot, I have less-than-gradually succumbed to a point where I hoard a collection of B-sides, demos, covers… look, I’m obsessed with Pavement and other such but this is different. It’s now.

From the umlaut to the stage quirks, Maxïmo Park are the sort of band it’s natural to fall in love with. And gone now is the book prop of the early days; it’s been replaced with something far more big-scale, namely professionalism. I can recall figureheads for every single one of the nine shows: Brixton Academy in 2007, A Certain Trigger is played in order, Paul Smith almost (I think ‘almost’) cries after playing ‘Acrobat’ for one of the first times; a cover of The Go-Betweens‘ ‘I Haven’t Seen Her In Ages’ at The Forum last year, in the encore; ‘Once, A Glimpse’ at the Vinyl Factory in London with different lyrics read from a book (nameless, I think).  Let’s not even get into the scissor-kick/falling-less-than-gracefully-into-a-heap-on-the-floor incident at Camden Barfly in January 2005. … Continue Reading

Stag and Dagger, Glasgow: Take One

Marnie Stern

May 23, 2009

I’m not, by nature, a festival goer – too wary of getting covered in mud from top to toe, shelling out £10 for a half-cooked burger and all the other cliches/urban myths, but the idea of an indoor, city-wide(ish) festival appeals big-scale so off I trot to Glasgow on a Saturday afternoon in line with the second Stag and Dagger progressing from its first Leeds date to its first Scottish one.

The earliest shows are on at The Captain’s Rest, namely featuring multi-instrumentalist local duo Over The Wall. Rather bizarrely, they suffer a string of technical mishaps similar to the only other opening act I’ve seen at the same venue, also a local two-some (see here for more). … Continue Reading

The latest video from P.O.S. – drumroll, please…

P.O.S.

Here we have the new video from P.O.S. for his track ‘Drumroll’, taken from his new album.

… Continue Reading

Glastonbury almost becomes an also-ran…

This could've been forever...

SHOCKER: Modern-day Jesus Michael Eavis has told a popular tabloid newspaper that he nearly scrapped Glastonbury! Why? Because it was becoming “too big, too muddy and too horrible”.

Wow.

This stemmed from criticisms that the veteran festival had become too commercial.

“Last year I thought that maybe we’d got to the end and we’d have to bite the bullet and fold it all up. A lot of the bands were saying Glastonbury had become too big, too muddy and too horrible. At one time the bands used to come on board.”

Strange timing considering the success of last year’s Jay-Z-led billing, surely? “I was prepared to walk away. But to come back from the dead of last year to sell out this year is amazing.” … Continue Reading

See the new Lily Allen video

Lily Allen

Her latest album was heralded a triumph and, in quick succession to the mega debut single ‘The Fear’, Lily Allen is releasing ‘Not Fair’.

… Continue Reading

The Rumble Strips announce their new album

The Rumble Strips

The Rumble Strips have announced the title of their new Mark Ronson-produced album. And it is called (cue fanfare) Welcome To The Walk Alone.

The album will be released on June 8, 2009, and will be preceded (or rather has been preceded) by the release of a free download track, ‘London’, available from MySpace. Wahey, mega-exposure! That one’s available as of today.

The band’s second album will be released on Island Records. … Continue Reading

Oh my god it’s a new Maccabees video.

Straight from the studio, here’s a live rendition of The Maccabees’ new single ‘Love You Better’.

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The latest In This Moment video – it’s very now

In This Moment

So here’s another visual treat for you – YouTube may have gone down the pan but our videodrome hasn’t.

… Continue Reading

Camden Crawl 2009 – news!

Camden Crawl

Texas is so far away, especially when you’re here. And especially more so when it’s holding the most wondruous musical festival in the world evah, namely SXSW. They wish we could be there too, we’re sure. But fret not, it’s ok! Because our very own Camden Crawl is almost upon us. Maybe with a smidgeon more skinny jeans, dirty blondes, tees-adorned-with-unfunny-slogans and Hadouken!-botherers in a square mile than anywhere else on earth, it’s a small price for being a banana’s throw away from a multitude of acts performing on stages smaller than your average.

Last year was great for a number of reasons: we saw Wild Beasts in a tiny little pub, cottoned on to Official Secrets Act (album review here) before the masses, immersed ourselves in Los Campesinos!‘ thesaurical joy, went all grime (bruv) at a Toddla T rave-up and then straight after that headed down the road for a snippet of Future Of The Left. Hell, we even tried our hands at the Crystal Castles phenomenon, just because we could.

… Continue Reading

Check out the brand new Franz Ferdinand video

Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand’s ‘No You Girls’ is out on April 6th 2009 and is the second single to be released from the Franz Ferdinand: Tonight record.

… Continue Reading