TinPanAl has written the following articles:
Black Habit is like wandering into a primal therapy session for a collection of bereaved chipmunks, and for all its charms it’s difficult to shake the notion that Rings are simply moving in ever-decreasing circles»
With their masterful second LP Devotion, Baltimore duo Beach House underline their claim to being one of the most subtly inventive acts to have gazed shoewards over the past ten years. DiS catches up with the enigmatic pair ahead of their American tour»
Even on a good day Timbaland’s unfeasibly smug just lately, and ‘Scream’ definitely represents a good day, up eight places to 20 this week. It’s a song about fucking, whichever way you slice it»
On second glance, maybe it's the sheer quality of these Ivy League New Yorkers that rankles most. We like to see posh people falling over, baring their arses, muttering darkly about lost empire - stuff like that. »
To say this elevates Beach House far above the ranks of shoegazers currently doing the rounds is putting it mildly - Devotion is as profound an invocation of the sacred and the sentimental as you’re ever likely to hear»
Klaxons' appearance with Rihanna at this year's BRIT Awards could have gone either way, so in the spirit of things DiS gives the not-rave trio advice on how to negotiate the pop covers minefield. Cough The Manics cough»
Despite at times straying a little too deep into lift musique territory, the sheer melodic invention at work here proves Monade really know their onions and ensures Monstre Cosmic is mazy pop gem worth getting lost in»
She does it well and everything but, by golly, does Duffy have to be quite so retro? ‘Mercy’ sounds like bad sixties wallpaper, and does its Lulu-esque thing at number one this week»
Lacking both the joyous twindie spunk of Los Campesinos! and the surly charm of The Cribs, ‘Oh Girl’ is the sound of indie punk given well-heeled harmonies and a big shiny face»
Even at a time when we're hardly short of self-possessed witchy women doing their eccentric thing, Lykke Li sounds like the kind of girl for whom even a trip to the corner shop with this girl involves dances with giant painted eggs and cavorting eunuchs»
American Gothic is passably structured, yes, but also instantly forgettable and with a curious lack of personality that’s unfortunately become one of Billy Corgan’s calling cards post-Y2K»
The latest Counter Culture instalment really is about as eye-poppingly good a recorded summation of leftfield pop going in to 2008 as you’re likely to get. Like, ever»
Welsh spitters of smart-mouthed bile Future Of The Left have announced details of a new single and European tour»
If absolutely pushed I’d have to suggest that that’s yesterday’s leftover shepherd’s pie slopping around in pop douche du jour David Jordan’s cranial cavity, such is the clod-hoofed inanity of his ‘Sun Goes Down’ single»
Give her twelve bars and a cheesy blues lick and Alison Goldfrapp’ll most likely kick some arse, but put her in a wood with her nightie on and the sparks will fail to fly. Somebody fetch me the nipple clamps»
For those of us still waiting with baited breath for that yet-to-materialise Meg White solo album (and we are surely legion) there’s always Correcto, perhaps most noteworthy for featuring Franz Ferdinand’s skin-tickler-in-residence Alex Thompson»
The Golden State’s fingerprints are all over Cass McCombs' third studio album like smog over the San Fernando valley, combining as it does elements of Elliott Smith at his lushest and most affable, the pristine songcraft of Forever Changes-era Arthur Lee and Lindsey Buckingham’s slick pop»
Not so much a single as an epitaph reading ‘SHIT BAND WOZ ‘ERE’, ‘Hey, Hey, Hey’ is a dire slab of provincial punk-funk rather suggesting that the telegram’s only just arrived in The Pistolas’ native Norwich decreeing that cowbells are officially in»
Adele’s ‘Chasing Pavements’ is still loitering at number two in the singles chart this week, like some annoying childhood trip to a garden centre on a Sunday afternoon. Pleasantly-scented boredom, and all that jazz»
Single of the Week... If there’s one lesson that was taught well to me by my mother as a youth, it’s that there’s no shame in coming second to a drumming gorilla. Want to know where I'm going with this? Me too.
Read more reviews of this week's singles here»
Made in The Dark bounds out of the blocks like a used car salesman spying his first customer of the day, but there's a niggling feeling that just acting natural might've suited Hot Chip better. Their scholarly approach to pop songwriting is admirable, yet this must ultimately rank as an opportunity missed»
Let's Wrestle are the band the maxim ‘here’s three chords, now start a band’ was invented for, a band to stop all the bickering and the name-calling and make you realise why you made music your girlfriend in the first place»
Traipsing across Soho's rain-slicked demi-monde teeming with individuals on first-name terms with destiny, you get the sense of a landscape ripe for harvesting by One More Grain's eccentric character studies. DiS finds out about their 'London' album and their snub to Kele from Bloc Party»
Sonically inhabiting a dystopian landscape that reeks of faulty electronics, smoking hard drives and misfiring synapses, Women As Lovers is proof positive that if navel gazing was an extreme sport, Xiu Xiu would be its leading practitioners»
Sorry to play the vindictive raincloud to their 'infectious brand of sunny optimism' and all, but if Stockholm's Those Dancing Days are flying the kites, I’m sending the lightning bolts»
You’ll be accustomed to the chart round-up being the jaded mutterings of a pop sadsack by now – sort of like Big crossed with 'Grumpy Old Men', only shitter – but this week the machine seems finally to be cranking into life so we’d better give it a good once over.»
There’s an air of the first-division indie slugger about The Duke Spirit that’s somehow likeable even if it leaves the band susceptible to being damned with faint praise, ’The Step & The Walk’ being a case in point»
A likeable marriage of The Libs’ ramshackle drive with Futureheads’ wonky pop thrust, Operahouse may be depressingly trad of influence but at least they’re not dragging their knuckles on the way in»
Ipso Facto are a band on the devil’s payroll, a freak show burlesque of pop noir to send a nation’s ambulance force careening down cul-de-sacs while people die screaming in terrific-sounding agony. Their hands, anything but idle»
Evoking the genius of the post-punk era without hollow reiteration of its conceits is no mean feat, but it’s a trick Glasgow’s Michael Dracula manage niftily. DiS gets the lowdown from the band’s brainchild Emily MacLaren»
