For 50p you can pre-order our special Christmas issue, which comes free with an A3 screenprint of original artwork from Matt The Horse.
In the issue, we have Johnny Foreigner, This Town Needs Guns, Big Success, The James Cleaver Quintet, Cloudkicker, Michael Kiwanuka, Munroe Effect, Blacklisters, and many more. As usual, I also have my column, Free Music For All, with this particular one focusing on math pop.
After almost exactly two years since their quite excellent debut album, Our First American Friends, Tubelord are now releasing their long awaited follow-up under the Big Scary Monsters/Holy Roar/Blood & Biscuits record label collective, Pink Mist.
As was hinted in their Tezcatlipoca EP, this was never going to be OFAF Mark II. They’ve moved from a math rock, Biffy Clyro-esque, ‘pop song for rock kids’ sound to a more indie math-pop vibe, a change brought about mostly by the addition of James Elliot Field on synths/keyboard. Nowhere is this more evident than ‘4t3’, a guitar-free, synth-dominated affair that plods along with quirky grace.
Read the rest of my review of the album on Musical Mathematics, with links to buy the album.
You know that feeling when an album you've been waiting so eagerly for the past few months for actually turns out to be utter crap? Well, that feeling can go suck a line of asses because that's not what happened with Mount Modern, the debut album of Snaevar Njall Albertsson (Mimas frontman) under the moniker of Dad Rocks! [Read my interview with him HERE]
At the core of it, Mount Modern retains many of the traits that make Digital Age the successful record it was: the cynical, ironic lyrics, the light-hearted yet slightly mournful music, and the earnest yet incredibly thoughtful tone the whole thing is packaged in. While his Digital Age EP was an absolutely wonderful piece of work with instant classics such as the incredibly titled Aroused By Hair and the cynical yet superb Kids, Mount Modern is several steps forward in Albertsson's maturity as a songwriter. Mount Modern dwarfs Digital Age with its depth and songcraft.
It is less of a lo-fi offering than his EP, with a myriad of instruments complementing his intriguingly idiosyncratic fingerpicking style. Mount Modern attempts to pose questions and tricks you into giving some thought into the grievances he brings up, when all you probably wanted was to listen to an acoustically-led album to spend your lazy weekend with.
Dad Rocks!'s songs are sunny days that come along when the world is slowly going to shit. It works as well when you're having a lovely cup of hot chocolate and there is a thunderstorm outside as it does when you're having a picnic at the beach while warships and battleships occupy the horizon.
Mount Modern is without question the album of the year so far, in my honest opinion. Every listen only convinces me more and more of this. It will take an absolutely special record to come out in December to topple Mount Modern off its high pedestal.
