Blog: The Daily Growl

It's Ash Wednesday today. If you're a Catholic or an Anglican Christian, that's the start of Lent. It's also the day after Shrove Tuesday (in Britain). In other countries, it's Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). The principle however, is the same. You use up all the rich/excessive stuff that you're supposed to give up for Lent, and then slip into 40 days of abstinence till Easter. In Britain, Shrove Tuesday is also called Pancake Day. Some of the indulgent things that used to be given up for Lent were [...]

The new Hot Chip album is all . over . the . blogs . Here are a couple of tracks off the album - live on Radio 1 a couple of weeks ago . Check them out. The live version of Over and Over is particularly hot! I can't wait to see them live again... Download: Over and Over (live on Radio 1) Download: And I Was a Boy from [...]

They’re back! After a mere nine years away. Heck, is it really 1997 since their last proper album? Yeah, well it is but they haven’t really been away all that time. In some ways Coldcut are an unusual proposition. A band whose most definitive and critically acclaimed work has been their treatment of other people’s music (namely their remix of Eric B and Rakim’s Paid in Full and their seminal Journeys By DJ mix album) are never really going to be defined by the sum of their own original musical output. [...]

OK, so various tracks from Mogwai’s Mr Beast have been around the internet for quite some time now, but it was very nice last week to get my hands on an actual physical copy of the Glasgow quintet’s new CD, and hear it in all it’s fuzzy, noisy glory, the way Stuart Braithwaite and the boys intended it to be. Not that 2003’s Happy Songs for Happy People was a drop in form, but this is LP [...]

I have a confession to make. I'm no longer a 'proper Londoner'. Yes, I did it. I went to Borough Market and took a photo. I go there every week as part of my food shopping, and have always seen myself above the happily-snapping hordes. 'I'm a proper Londoner' I thought. 'I come here to shop - not mooch around shooting vegetable displays'. Well on Saturday I was there. And I had a camera in my bag (for some other reason - honest!). And I saw this brownie tower and had to take a photo. So sorry. But it is [...]

I finally got to see Walk the Line on Monday. What a great movie! It's one of these films that everyone you know who's seen it loves it. OK, maybe that's just me - but whoever they are - friends or colleagues - everyone to a person really liked it. Not just 'Oh, it's OK'. More 'it was really good'. Maybe it's because it's such a fantastic story. And the fine performances help a lot. I mean - Joaquin Phoenix - he doesn't look a whole lot like Johnny, but [...]

I was disappointed when Isobel Campbell in Belle and Sebastian. I feared that her solo career would be too much like her previous 'Gentle Waves' side project, which was a bit too indie-twee with not enough good tunes. And I haven't really caught up with her until the new album Ballad of the Broken Seas . Just as her former bandmates have ditched the twee through more muscular production and exploring new sounds, Isobel has gone for the most un-twee person she must have been able to think of to collaborate with. Mark Lanegan [...]

A gig on Sunday night? But there’s work the next day. But it’s Tilly and the Wall . Yeah, they’re quite good (I think), it’s at the Buffalo Bar (easy to get home from) and best of all it’s only three quid? Oh, go on then. And I’m so glad I did! What a great gig! I was aware of their wayward charms from their album ‘Wild Like Children’ which I downloaded (inexplicably) free from their US record company’s site a couple of years ago. [...]