The Wave Pictures – Beer In The Breakers - April 2011 April 17th, 2011

With their two colour sleeves and occasional vinyl only releases, Wymeswold’s The Wave Pictures are iconic figures to indie rock puritans. But Beer In The Breakers transcends such perceptions. Taped live and loose, with no overdubs, in a Walthamstow flat by fellow traveller Darren Hayman of Hefner, the rattling kit rushes to catch up with…

Comet Gain – Howl Of The Lonely Crowd - April 2011 April 17th, 2011

Since the mid-nineties, Comet Gain have invoked a holy trinity of Eighties Twee Indie, Seventies Punk and Sixties soul sounds, their early ubiquity on the London circuit perhaps devaluing their currency. But the patronage of their new producer Ryan Jarman, of the currently fashionable group The Cribs, provides fleeting focus for new fans. Comet Gain’s…

Stranded Horse – Humbling Tides - April 2011 April 9th, 2011

When the Frenchman Yann Tambour released his previous records as Thee Stranded Horse he was attempting mystery in a second language. Forgive Tambour. He plucks cascades of twinkling notes from a twenty-one string Kora, and his studiously subdued vocals, in French and English, now suggest the timeless tunes of some travelling Medieval troubadour, rather than…

The Saints – All Times Through Paradise - April 2011 April 9th, 2011

This four disc set of the first three studio albums by Brisbane’s punk pioneers The Saints was first issued in 2004, its newly compact packaging reflecting the diminishing shelf space of its forty-something consumers. But the kids should at least download the ’76 disc I’m Stranded for its perfect meeting of mess and melody, and…

Mars Classroom – The New Theory Of Everything - April 2011 April 9th, 2011

The quirky indie-pop Gary Waleik penned for Big Dipper was incinerated in an early ’90s major label backdraught. The pathologically prolific post-mod Robert Pollard’s fourth album of the year siphons eleven plangent tunes from this slumbering giant, over which the former Guided By Voices front-man free-associates his oddly affecting shred and stick poetics and classic…

Mani Neumeier and Kawabata Makoto – Samurai Blues - April 2011 April 3rd, 2011

Kawabata Makoto’s bands – Musica Transonic, Mainliner, Acid Mothers Temple – have a cannibalistic relationship with the underground’s first flowering, regurgitating exaggerated forms of psychedelia, hard rock and proto-punk. Here he teams with a genuine first generation innovator, the percussionist Mani Neumeier of the Seventies krautrockers Guru Guru, a kind of free jazz Stooges. On…