James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
The Christian rock band from Brighton bring religion to the masses.
Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
Radio Ladio, out on December 3rd, is the band’s first single on their own label, Need Now Future Records. Growing from an unobtrusive intro through finger snapping, synths, and pounding percussion – layers of sound are placed on top of each other – until at least four different tracks playing simultaneously.
Old school funk mixes with Spanish guitar and new school hip-hop to create something that’s fresh, new, exciting – most of all made for dancing. The vocal is intentionally minimal, because the sound, rather than the message, is what’s important. We come to a deceptively swift crescendo, until silence…then the vocal starts again, this time with what sounds like prepubescent girls singing R-A-D-I-OOOOOO! Radio Ladio is like the natural progression from ridiculous 80s electrica to the present day – definitely one for the cocktail drinking Ziggy’s crowd.
Janelle Rodriques
I imagine Lazy Bones as a sort of upbeat, indie patchwork quilt: made up of musical scraps from all sorts of places but simultaneously very good in its own right. At times I think can hear the influence of The Coral, Madness, Blur and a few nursery rhymes, to name a few. Stitched together, however, the whole thing has a cheerful-yet-menacing quality that is guaranteed to make you want to dance.
Jess Price
Emmy reveals that she wrote this tune for “a cute boy from MySpace". Fortunately it lacks any of the pretentiousness you would expect from such a commission, although it does draw on nineteenth-century epistolary novels as its lyrical source. The backing is a standard combo of acoustic guitars and folky strings, but it is Emmy’s voice that makes this what is usually termed as ‘a little bit special,’ and means that the whimsical nature of the verses is an asset rather than ridiculous. And anyway, folky singer song writery is intrinsically linked to small pubs, and small pubs are intrinsically linked to real fires in fireplaces, and all of these things are a good thing when it is bloody freezing and dark outside.
Ben Rackstraw
Kerrang! describe HIM’s (His Infernal Majesty, no less) latest offering to the table of soft-core “I am in pain” pseudo-metal as “true rock greatness”. They are wrong. From the awful lyrics (by the heart of our hearts/with death we will win) to the widdly-widdly synths, Bleed Well patronises 13 year-old rock kids across the world. It’s not even poppy enough to be Fall Out Boy-fun. Dire.
Helen Nianias
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