Listen Before You Buy

TweetShare Buy the album from Amazon – Vinyl / MP3 / CD There are a lot of people who still hate The Horrors for having the audacity to be lauded by the British music press before releasing a single note of music. When their first album dropped, it was subject to a wave of negativity [...]

TweetShare Most of the time when you are writing about bands, you don’t hear the music first. You’ll see a PR email, or a direct email, or a website link or something. A lot of bands underestimate therefore, just how important it can be to have that first impression come over as professional and attractive, [...]

TweetShare Connect with UNKLE – Facebook | Myspace | Twitter | Website

TweetShare Austin, TX is regularly cited as the “live music capital of the world”. I was recently there myself, and I have to say it certainly does have an impressive array of venues, bands, and bars where you can ingest many different kinds of music. And I was there on a Monday night. One of [...]

TweetShare The Horrors second album was not only one of the biggest surprises for me in 2009, but it ended up being pretty much my favourite album of that year. The way the went from being a band who wore their garage influences on their sleeve and annoyed me a little bit to being a [...]

TweetShare Theophilus London’s mixtape from a year or so ago was one of my hip-hop highlights from the past few years. The first rapper I’ve ever heard reference The Smiths, his outlook and style is in direct opposition to the dark nihilism of Odd Future, incorporating melodies, choruses and bright instrumentation into his beats. You’d [...]

TweetShare This London group combines a lot of elements that I regard as “preferable criteria” when I evaluate the appropriateness of a piece of music for my listening time. On show are heavy, but spacious Joy Division-esque drums, an almost Strokes-y sensibility to the guitar, sweet boy/girl vocals and big, lush synthesiser pads that fill [...]

TweetShare I’ve always wondered why The Wedding Present’s high speed jangle-madness hasn’t been copied more often. It’s such a simple sound, yet one that manages to captivate, uplift and inspire all at the same time. That mad rush of guitars and drums playing simple three or four chord songs way too fast and the sound [...]

TweetShare Yuck were born out of the ashes of Cajun Dance Party who, while quite popular and quite competent in their chosen genre, were pretty “of their time.”  They were one of a hundred English indie bands that proliferated around 2007/2008 and disappeared shortly after. The one thing they did have on their sides however, [...]

TweetShare When I first started writing for Listen Before You Buy, I had no idea the range of music that would be found in the submissions. For instance, I never for a second thought that I’d be listening to the 2010 Slovakian Album of the Year, which sounds weirdly like Tears for Fears, and…loving it. [...]

TweetShareI don’t know anybody that doesn’t like old school hip hop. The electro bounce, the fun lyrics, there is just something about Sugarhill Gang, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash etc that warms the cockles and gets dancefloors moving. That’s why I often wonder why there isn’t more contemporary hip hop that overtly references those early days [...]

TweetShare  When I listened to the first few bars of “Steve-O Don’t Move To San Francisco” by Andy Maher Candy Bar, I was almost about to hit the stop button immediately. Call me a heathen, but strummed acoustic guitars just immediately turn me off, I don’t know why. I’m so glad I chose to delay [...]

TweetShare It seems like there are quality bands popping up in Scotland at an alarming rate at the moment, and what makes it so exciting is that they aren’t all tied to a single sound, or movement, they are spread across the musical landscape evenly. So for every 16-year old Dubstep producer like Hangman you [...]

TweetShare Hercules And Love Affair have a new single, “Painted Eyes”, coming out on April 18th, and for their b-side they have decided it’s their turn to take on a reworking of the minimalism of The XX. Many have tried, many have failed, and a few have had minor successes. For their stab at it, [...]

TweetShare Com Truise, aka Seth Haley, first released this EP back in June of 2010, but has recently repackaged and rereleased it with four extra tracks for the princely sum of nothing. You can head over to his (beautifully designed)  website and pick it up for absolutely zilch. If you are unfamiliar with Com Truise, [...]

TweetShare Some bands become so inextricably linked with their city that it’s hard to think of one without the other. For instance, The Strokes = New York, Pulp = Sheffield and Mogwai definitely = Glasgow. Despite being a largely instrumental band, they have managed to reference their home city and its culture in their song [...]