Fri 27 Apr – The Magnetic Fields, The Tender Trap

Published HERE: http://www.manchesterscenewipe.co.uk/reviews/the-magnetic-fields/

My excuse for missing The Magnetic Fields at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2004 was attending the wedding reception of my first girlfriend. As apt an excuse as any for missing the Magnetic Fields…but considering I’d gone out with her for just a couple of months 10 years previously, and the wedding took place at The Brittania Hotel – it occurred to me as being just as good an excuse for skipping out on said wedding’s reception and going to the RNCM instead. An idea…

Published here http://treblezine.com/reviews/4062-Jack_White_Blunderbuss.html

A decade after coming to global prominence, it seems a little incongruous for so iconic and omnipresent an auteur as Jack White to only just be issuing his debut solo offering. It's fair to say White's career has been based on reinventing the wheel, something he and Meg got so bullseye-right, with the White Stripes' red & white take on the blues, and despite having spent much of that latter half of that time producing a continuous slew of solid offerings in three concurrently running bands, White shows no signs of slacking off or getting self-indulgent…

Published here

These Furrows’ bio goes to great lengths to convince the reader that they defy classification, or even a sniff of their influences – a piece of Pop-Propaganda smashed less than 3 seconds into ‘No Invitation, No Welcome’, when a sense of the rest of their material along with a picture of the band’s look, is instantly and fairly accurately formed (I only fell short of correctly guessing their designations). This is the two-thousand-and-teens attempt at wresting melodic Pop Punk back from the Children In Need arena that McFly and Busted took it via Sum 41…

Published here: http://www.manchesterscenewipe.co.uk/reviews/super-best-friends-club-yes-you-are-review/

A strange choice for a standalone, this single starts off as though it should be accompanying some YouTube compilation of seemingly meaningful mini-clips that speak of the wonder in living on this fantastical planet as the simple four note piano noodle repeats over and over – I see a droplet bombing a liquid crown out of a peaceful body of water, a frog leaping through the air across the sun in slow motion, a stop motion flower blooming before clamming up as the dark seeps in- certainly a scene setter, an opening track rather than a single,…

Sat 24 Mar – The Stranglers, The Popes

The pretty cool girl from Burnage invites you back to her house. The living
room has a mottled copper-topped coffee table with oversized plastic ashtrays
stolen from the local. Her parents smoke filterless cigarettes which protrude
from between knuckles on hands muddied with homemade tattoos which,
gripping Swiss Army Knife & Promotional Corkscrew-blade respectively, peel
potatoes onto old tabloids between their feet on the living room floor. There's
a half-eaten Jaffa Cake bobbing in the Fish Tank, providing a late-thrust in the
algae-battle one of those endlessly entertaining glass-cleaning magnets has
clearly…

While never a decidedly couple-led project, the longer we grew up with Sonic Youth, the more it grew to feel like the Mom & Pop operation of Thurston & Kim, who in the case of many of their fans, were in fact old enough to be our parents. So when their split was announced, not only was it more devastating than perhaps anticipated, but it was only natural to assume that the band would likely not survive the schism. Chief among evidence to the contrary was Lee Ranaldo's refusal to admit to a Sonic Youth-less future. This statement…

Earth specialize in dreary forays into the subtly supernatural that, in the hands of a lesser band, would be laughable, but if you use these records to soundtrack the news, it's easy to believe in demons. While it's hard to try and write an engaging review about 11-minute epics that stir up black landscapes in the mind's eye, these are universally apt sounds for February's trees in stasis, naked and stretching their gnarled and knotted limbs toward the blotted-out sun. Judging by recent promotional shots of the band, Dylan Carlson is increasingly taking on the appearance of some world-weary, handlebar…

It's hard for the listener not to consider the possibility of a change in mentality or approach on Sonic Youth's first indie excursion in 18 years. Ironically The Eternal sounds more like it's trying to hearken back to the big rock riffs and psychedelic feedback up-drafts of Dirty. Kim's strained & strangled vocals seem more prevalent than in any record since Washing Machine. "Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso)" is a bit of a flimsy dinghy. The Beat poets are perpetually wrecked for us all by each semester's Freshmen. The idea of Sonic Youth having to…

"I ripped your heart out from your chest, replaced it with a grenade blast"

Rather Ripped peels-out with Kim's "Reena," which spouts off like a careering relationship's reconciliation after a same-sex indiscretion, while "Incinerate" goes one better and shows that Thurston can still re-write the archetypal exhilarating, fretboard-grating Sonic Youth sound. Confusingly, Jim O'Rourke's departure gifts them the freshness they sought by employing him, and Rather Ripped is easily their most satisfying outing for 10 years. Thurston's "Pink Steam" rains down one of the most interesting and heart-wrenching songs of their entire back…

"Single fold sick insert design in junk"

Jim O'Rourke's last album as auxiliary seems to see them stop trying too hard to be themselves or anything else, and manages to plug the problem of lack of substance that leaves its two predecessors feeling a little lacking. While none of the songs are too insistent in establishing themselves as anything other than the sum of their parts, it is most definitely the most satisfying outing since Washing Machine. Lee Ranaldo's "Paper Cup Exit" and Thurston's "Peace Attack" belatedly and deftly address the country's foreign policy…