Listen Before You Buy

From the first juicy, sparkling synth gems bursting from the speakers in album opener “Countdown”, Escapologists instantly hook you with their unexpected melodies and dreamy take on prog rock. There is something there in their musical structures that really brings to mind gazing out at rolling landscapes, allowing your mind to be ten thousand miles away, galloping around in a gauzy dreamworld.

The boys mention Wild Beasts as an influence, which isn’t exactly surprising. When they look further back, it’s to the likes of Talking Heads and The Cure.

TweetShare Generally speaking, water and musical instruments don’t mix, but Boy + Kite (the + is “plus”, not “and”) managed to find a way to make it work. In fairness, it’s not as though they routinely gig from a hot tub, but they did form in one. It’s impressive enough that they could muster the energy [...]

TweetShare Somewhere between The Beach Boys and The Cure falls “Pretty In Decadence” the first single from the French Films debut album “Imaginary Future.” If anything “Pretty In Decadence” has an overall feeling similar to what Robert Smith would have given off if he weren’t constantly obsessing over breaking up with who he’s with or [...]

TweetShare There’s a jangled brush in “The Dive,” the lead track on Los Angeles band Fool’s Gold’s sophomore release “Leave No Trace.” It’s a tightly confined cross-breed of Western African harmonies and contemporary pop aesthetics. That should sound familiar: it isn’t too far off the well-worn path already travelled by Talking Heads and, even more [...]

TweetShare  If The Cure did electro-pop, they might end up sounding something like Letting Up Despite Great Faults. Maybe Robert Smith could get a haircut while he was at it, although I guess that would just be a nicety. Also, I heard that that’s where he gets his power. He’s like a really miserable, weedy [...]

TweetShare Taking advantage of their newly-minted Soundcloud page, The Big Pink have been adding some of their music to it over the last couple of weeks or so, whether it be remixes of their songs by other artists, snippets of NEW songs from their as-yet-unannounced-and-untitled album, or this cover of The Cure’s “Lovesong”. If you’re unfamiliar [...]

TweetShare In the run up to, the release of, and the ensuing media praise and appearances of Bon Iver‘s newest album “Bon Iver, Bon Iver” he was performing a cover of Bonnie Raitt’s much-covered-by-a-bunch-of-other-artists-too, “I Can’t Make You Love Me”. A couple of weeks ago as Adele had just announced that she’d cancelled shows stateside due [...]

TweetShare “Like The Smashing Pumpkins, when they were good.” So Lightouts describe themselves. I’ve heard of less ambitious introductions – there is such a thing as setting yourself up for a fall. How many members did The Smashing Pumpkins have, again? Like, four plus several extras? And we’re talking about the early years, with Billy [...]

TweetShare While the Pigeon Detectives have been quiet over the last few years, they have popped back on the scene with a new single and video called “Done In Secret.”  This is the first single off of their upcoming album, “Up, Guards And At ‘Em!’” – which is set to be released on April 4th. [...]

TweetShare If you’re unaware of what Music Monday is, it’s a Twitter recommendation system where users of Twitter share their favourite music, artists, genres, etc in order to not only find new music themselves but help others find new music too.  Using the hashtag (#) followed by “MusicMonday” you can easily find new music posted [...]

TweetShare If you’re unaware of what Music Monday is, it’s a Twitter recommendation system where users of Twitter share their favourite music, artists, genres, etc in order to not only find new music themselves but help others find new music too.  Using the hashtag (#) followed by “MusicMonday” you can easily find new music posted [...]

TweetShare Dark, brooding, and Gothic, Blessure Grave from San Diego blend music from The Cure, Joy Division and Cocteau Twins into one frighteningly atmospheric and introspected sound that can either instigate a bad mood and get you out of one, but bad moods are awesome (they give you license to be a justifiable dick to anyone!) so [...]

TweetShare Why the fuck not? Beginning as a Hip-Hop and Indie-Rock lyricist, Jonathan “Yoni” Wolf has since gone on to attract others into his ever-revolving Indie-Electronic-Hip-Hop-Folk-Rock orbit, including his brother Josiah Wolf on drums (who just released his debut album this week), Doug McDiarmid, and Matt Meldon.  Signed to Anticon Records they’ve dropped five highly regarded [...]