• Review: Ultimate Painting – Dusk

      I keep mistyping their name as “Intimate Painting”. It’s a Freudian slip, really. Dusk is the third Ultimate Painting, a well-oiled psychedelic folk machine made up from Jack Cooper and James Hoare . Both come from severely underrated bands, Mazes and Veronica Falls. What first brought me into their world is how their writing styles melted together. Ultimate Painting had enough distorted moments to jolt you from…

  • 30 days, 30 bands – #29 Tye Die Tapes

    Right, not an actual band, but a label that was doing something very different. Bored stiff with the scene (hate that word) in Sheffield, Adam Zejma and James Levitt ventured into that white husk overlooking the blue devastation called Decathlon and that dive bar infected by racists, Lord Nelson. From 2010 until 2016, that upper floor…

  • 30 days, 30 bands – #28 Wet Nuns

    Author’s note:  It’s been almost two years since I wrote this. It was a couple of days after Leki left us. I was angry, depressed and confused. Leki was always nice to me. Every time I ran into him, either on West Street, at a gig or just rambling by the forest, he would always have a quick, honest…

  • Review: The Lucid Dream – Compulsion Songs

      What is the sound of space? NASA  has already solved this question, but the music fans, as romantic as they always will be like, imagine it being reverberated, droning and strangely hypnotic. Give me the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Quatermass, Hookworms and Aarktica and I’ll be happy. None in stock? It matters not, I see you…

  • 30 days, 30 bands – #27 The Violet May

    “No, you aren’t the Sex Pistols, stop acting like this!” – a fellow reviewer on twitter referring to the Violet May’s set at The Foundry. Another band I got into thanks to The Hope Explosion. It was them who got me into The Violet May after a long conversation in the lovely beer garden at the…

  • 30 days, 30 bands – #26 Dead Sons

    “I described you to my friends in Mexico as Apocalyptic desert rock“ “We’re alright with that!” -2008- “It’s a shame you weren’t around before, fella” he said, before taking a gulp of Kopparberg, “you could’ve seen Milburn‘s last ever gig“. “When was this?” I ask to the guy whose name I never quite got. The…

  • 30 days, 30 bands – #25 Molly Anna

    Wait, what? This might feel like a cheat. Maybe. I know these posts under the umbrella tag “The Sheffield Years” celebrate some of the many bands I saw while living in Sheffield. Bands that made it, bands that burnt out, bands that never quite achieved flight. So, why Molly Anna? Why place a band like…

  • 30 Days, 30 Bands – #24 Blood Sport

    When you and your mates at Uni start a band, which genre do you attach yourself to, like a lamprey holding for dear life? In a city renowned for quiffs and indie rockers, the possibility of becoming just another Wilkinson-brand #epicbantzsquad is a looming threat. I’m not quite sure how Blood Sport landed face first into the…

  • Review: Flock of Dimes – If you see me, say yes

      As previously mentioned in my Psychic Twin review, anyone saying electronic music can’t pack a punch better check themselves (before they break themselves). Strange Diary was exhibit A. Exhibit B is If you see me, say yes, the debut album by Flock of Dimes.  Flock of dimes is, of course, Jenn Wasner, far from the gothic Americana rock of Wye…

  • 30 days, 30 bands – #23 Canyon Family

    I have a weird obsession with 70s country folk. Sometimes it veers into false memories of golden bright days, being driven around Tula, Hidalgo, while the radio blasts America, Fairport Convention, and John Denver. Other times, dashes of Mazzy Star, Whiskeytown, and Uncle Tupelo come up. I can’t quite put my finger on the name…