Mike_Diver has written the following articles:
Categorising Navajo Code as post-hardcore is likely to have some approaching with caution, but please: think more of the No Idea school of Small Brown Bike and Planes Mistaken For Stars - bands with brutality enough to balance out their melodic inclinations - with a subtle hint of the naked aggression of Bullet Union and Hot Snakes...»
Sunderland-based This Aint Vegas have returned to recording ways with a devilishly good second album, The Night Don Benito Saved My Life, and have rolled into town for the first of two capital shows to prove just how potent the new songs are...»
'Rebellion (Lies)' is a quite magical, wonderfully and woefully desperate-sounding, beautifully arranged and precisely executed four-and-something minutes of A-grade indie rock...»
By song five the quality control has dipped dramatically, and the band have slipped from affecting tales of love and life gone all directions of awry into cliché-riddled dribble that not even the authors of the multi-billion-selling Songs About Some Girl I Slept With Once, Oh Boo Bloody Hoo would be proud to call their own...»
‘Come See The Duck’ opens, Satomi sings in English for the only time on Deerhoof's new(ish - tis out in the States already) seven-track offering, things go clattering and crashing from a mountain of gin-soaked marshmallows into a river of molten Milky Ways...»
"...tell me this: when it's really cold, why the f*ck would I walk to the beach? Just because it's pretty? You like going to beaches in the winter? I like pretty girls and fireplaces." DiS meets Saul Williams to talk politics, festival appearances at ATP and Reading/Leeds, and about his hopes and dreams for all of us...»
Sure, it's tailor-made for the mass MTV markets - all the hooks are in the right places and dangerously well signposted - but I'll be damned if I didn't crack a smile to MCR's soaring vocals and genuinely rockin' chorus...»
Is it already wrong to display an obvious debt to the depressive overtones of Joy Division and their latter-day spawned ilk? If not, then hats off to Cherubs...»
With a John McEntire-produced album in the can, much is expected from harmonious poppers The Research, their deadpan-meets-the-delirious kitchen-sinkers receiving Chinese whisper recommendations from the right corners of the relevant press...»
My Chemical Romance are to play a brace of dates at London's petite Underworld venue prior to appearances at Reading and Leeds...»
Spittin' fiery blood and screaming venomously indecipherable abuse, Days Ago return to recording ways after a lengthy hiatus with this four-track EP...»
Statistics' Often Lie is the sole pop-cum-indie-cum-emo record that’s worth investment this summer; overlook Death Cab’s limp return and say hello to your latest headphone buddy...»
Summertime, and the living is clammy. But worry not, sweet indie ravers, for The Buffalo Bar, home to August's Cut And Paste, has remarkable air comditioning! I know, I didn't believe it either, but last month my pits emerged at 2am unsoiled by salty sweat. Yum yum bananas...»
So, alone in this room of stone and water cold enough to chill from toe tip to pricked ear, frantically scanning the still air for mumbles of my indier-than-thou-ness from behind twin doors, I ponder something: what, exactly, is responsible for this meteoric rise to superstardom? Why he, why now, and most troubling, why here?»
After-dark Camden’s hellish enough as it is without having to tolerate the rabid screams of the cursed undead. Send More Paramedics twitch and jerk, flail limbs left ‘n’ right, and talk much of brain-munching and midnight snacking on the young and the hopeless... and play punk rock real good.»
Buck 65 – or Rich to his local Blockbuster’s spotty weekend staff – proclaims as early as track five on Secret House Against The World that hip-hop has ruined his life. It’s a funny thing to say, considering that he’s never openly professed to be a pure (read: straight) hip-hop act...»
There are three guys on stage making the noise of an amplified army, stoner riffs bludgeoned into a bastardised version of some psychedelic outfit from way back...»
Tea at the Test Match, and I've a cup of the stuff on my desk: just time enough to run through some of those pesky releases that so nearly slipped through the (albeit small) critical net. Starring: Acoustic Ladyland, Motion City Soundtrack, The Dropkick Murphys, Lazarus and many more...»
...it's as if Sigur Rós, Azure Ray and Bright Eyes pooled their collective talents in a magical log cabin at the furthest horizon of the Earth, stocked with only whiskey, teardrops and fairy dust...»
Remember the good times – dancing and singing to songs full of youthful vitality and pop-punk hooks the size of tower blocks – and ignore this quasi-metal death rattle of rehashed riffs and redundant ideas...»
What last long-player Australasia promised – a bright future at the forefront of the instrumental rock scene; successful live shows reinforced the feeling – has not been capitalised upon; there is simply too much of too little here to warrant the kind of praise one expected to be heaping atop another Pelican album...»
Mightily rocking Los Angeles outfit The Warlocks play a special, 'secret' show in London next week, and DiS has FIVE pairs of tickets to give to you, our ever-loyal readers. Thanks. We love you, you know...»
However colourful her history - a childhood in Australia, New York lunch dates with Quentin Crisp, all-girl punk-funk outfits - every review of Petra Jean Phillipson's debut stab at going it alone (this one is no exception) will be prefaced by three words: The Free Association...»
Whisper it: We Can Breathe... is a Drive-Thru release that warrants fevered investigation. Just don't take its bittersweet romaticism of alcohol to heart...»
Hot Snakes, who recently announced their intention to quit, are to play one final, farewell UK show at London's Camden Underworld on Thursday 11th August...»
It’s as simple as it is sweet 'n' sour: pop music done with intelligence and wit, to be danced to as easily it can be mourned to...»
More names have been added to the bill for this December's Mars Volta-curated Nightmare Before Christmas ATP festival...»
Listen to this a few times and you'll begin imagining the innumerable ways in which a guitar can be obliterated. Me? I choose incineration - no chance of a pretty corpse. Charlottefield's are certainly hellbent on self-destruction...»
This is a band suffering an ATD-I affliction, and sweating it out well. These are murderous songs, songs of passionate rebellion and of dancefloor massacres...»
How much rock can one Sunday take? This Sunday one boat will creak under the weight of A WHOLE LOT. Pirate garb optional...»
