We can agree to disagree, but the rainy and grey United Kingdom has produced several of the most evocative and influential bands of the past century, extending far past The Beatles and The Smiths to contemporary experimental acts. The problem, however, is that a good number of them have an irksome tendency to become insular, preferring to stay close to home. True, it’s at times more cost-effective and far easier to schedule, but that doesn't help us fans here over in the States. With that in mind, here's a list of UK acts we’d love to see in the near [...]
Frank Yang For those not in the business of keeping up with the buzz bands of the moment, Palma Violets may not yet have appeared on your radar. Though the release of their debut album 180 is still a month out, they've already been heralded as the vanguard of the return of guitar rock - I didn't realize it had ever gone away - and various permutations of This Year's Model. A title which, while a tremendously helpful leg up as far as getting people interested goes, is also a decidedly two-edged thing as [...]
Last year Emmy The Great & Tim Wheeler set out to do the impossible: to record a Christmas album whilst largely omitting much of the schmalz associated with this merry season. On 'This Is Chrismtas' they succeeded in releasing a thoroughly enjoyable album. Having already toured the album in 2011 they were back at it [...]
Dry The River London's Dry The River may not have had quite the world-conquering 2012 that I'd predicted for them back in the Spring , but they've still had a very good year, their debut album Shallow Bed delivering on the buzz that they'd built up at home and also translating trans-Atlantically, justifying a couple of North American tours. Not quite Mumford-level triumphs for the folk-rockers, but pretty damn good for a first outing. So good, that they've recorded the album all over again. They've [...]
By Joe Watson December 19, 2012 Dashing through the door, on the road to Oran Mor, for a split second I pondered with the idea of sporting a Santa hat. Had I done so I would have have felt more out of place than a Cliff Richard single in June. The venue and stage were thin with seasonal decoration and the spirit of Christmas was left purely down to the music. Some more waiting had to be done though as support act Emperor Yes lyrically navigated their way through a synth-pop set of [...]
The VPME Our final Songs to Learn and Sing feature ahead of our End of Year awards Emmy The Great And Tim Wheeler Last year Tim and Emma released This is Christmas” written when they were both snowed in during the festive season the previous year, and demonstrated that it is possible to produce a credible Christmas album and have great fun doing so. Replete with shimmering melodies, sleigh bells, strings and reindeers called Jesus they perfectly captured the spirit of the season by [...]
Three-day UK festival Strummer of Love enters its tenth year with a bang.
I tend to lose interest in an album I’m not in love with after the fourth or fifth song. No matter how good the songs are, if they aren’t what I’m craving at that exact moment, I usually can’t make it past the 15 minute mark. When I first started listening to Dan Le Sac’s new album, “Space Between the Words,” it wasn’t what I was craving. The first track is Long Night of Life, a richly-produced song with handclaps and synthesizers featuring electro-folk singer Merz. It is complex, but not memorable. Lucky for me, that one [...]
UK electronic producer and an army of guest vocalists soundtrack the most dangerous night of your life.
Weekends (mp3) Tiger Waves http://tigerwaves.bandcamp.com / テキサスのオースティ ンのフリークポップ。 Emmy The Great - We Almost Had A Baby http://music-islands.com/blog/ ?p=3014
One of my all-time favorite female singer-songwriters, Emmy the Great , played a rare State-side show in Philly last summer at The Trocadero Balcony. See all of my photos from the show at Examiner.com .
La joven británica Emmy The Great acaba de presentar el cortometraje “God Of Loneliness” en el cual de alguna manera nos pinta un escenario en el que si ustedes están esperando visitas y no se les da del todo la cocina, lo mejor que pudieran haceres salir a comer a algún restaurante o contratar algún catering. Más que nada porque puede pasarles como a la protagonista del cortometraje de “God Of Loneliness”, que sin comerlo ni beberlo se ve envuelta en una situación de lo más surrealista (aunque ella esté encantada con el resultado). Este track, como seguramente [...]
Emmy the Great has self-described the mini-film / promo for 'God of Loneliness' as a 'horror rom-com' starring none other than Isy Suttie (Peep Show) and Shazad Latif (Spooks). Filmed in West London’s Trellick Tower by Chris Boyle, it's a kooky, weird and altogether unsettling video that reminds me a bit of a scene out of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. If this is too eerie for you, read Martin's review of the single here. Click here to view the embedded video.
Lilja Birgisdottir Advance album streams are pretty par for the course these days, but if anyone can make it a special occasion, it's Sigur Rós . And they're certainly trying to. Though their new record and first in four years Valtari isn't out until May 29, the band will be offering an advance stream of the record on May 17 - that's today, people - but for only one hour. Dubbed " Valtari Hour" , it will roll across the globe at 7PM local time for [...]
Emmy The Great ’s album 'Virtue' has been out for nearly a year now; she’s decided not enough people have heard it, so a deluxe version is on its way in order to tempt those who haven’t yet made a purchase. With the usual 'deluxe' trimmings, and more rare tracks and remixes, this is a release both for the Emmy completist, and for those who are just falling under the spell of the jewel-voiced Ms Moss for the first time. To announce the new release, ‘God Of Loneliness’ is being released as a single. [...]
Before the iPod and shuffle, the only option if you wanted to flit randomly between musical styles was a compilation CD or a multi CD changer, a machine that once stuffed with your favourite discs would seamlessly blend from one album to another with only a great clanking noise to hint at the switch. The only other choice was the "producer" album or to give them their official name "faceless producers". In the late eighties and early 902s they were everywhere, Coldcut, Bomb The Bass, S'express, Beatmasters, and later Leftfield. The music critics hated them, sniffing that their albums [...]
Baby Names I like Arya Anastasia Luna Alexander Atlas Luna Arya b.c of Arya Stark Annastasia b/c of "Yes, Anastasia" Atlas b/c of Bioshock + Tori Amos (Yes, Anastasia) live in Vienna Emmy The Great: [ We Almost Had A...
Nothing like a little bit of sibling love. London band Dems features Emmy the Great 's (Emma-Lee Moss) brother, so she gave us the heads-up on a remix of her forthcoming single 'God of Loneliness', out in May, that Dems did. Listen to and download the remix below.
Facebook If you accept that Damon Albarn is speaking truth and that these are the end times for Blur , you have to admit they're doing it right. They've got their August 12 date at Hyde Park in London earmarked as the swan song, a lovely new (final) single in "Under The Westway" in the can and ready to surely top the charts one last time, and before they go, they're clearing out the archival cupboards well and proper. On July 31, to mark the 21st anniversary of their debut [...]
Gabriel Bruce I'm no fan of the deluxe reissue trend - at least not with respect to an album that came out less than a year ago - as it tends to punish the biggest fans, those who would have bought the original issue and most want whatever bonus materials are applied to the reissue. So while I don't greet the news that Emmy The Great is doing this with last year's Virtue - one of my faves of 2011 - I at least appreciate that some [...]
Consequence Of Sound
Chromewaves
Cougar Microbes![Emmy the Great & Tim Wheeler - Zombie Christmas [Official Video]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/eGukj0g5gqY_130.jpg)
Muso's Guide
The VPME
Societe Perrier
MVRemix Rock
The Owl Mag
Music Islands
Blog del Jalapeño
My Blog Cliche
There Goes the Fear
music like dirt
Achtung Baby!
Frau – Tarian Sari (stream)
Johnny Marr blames ‘record label politics’ for stopping The Smiths boxset
Franz Ferdinand plot tour, share behind-the-scenes video
