Author: Mike Rea Page 10
Various Artists - Bridge School Collection Vol 2
Various Artists Bridge School Collection Vol 2 Album Review The Bridge School Benefit is an annual non-profit charity concert held in Mountain View, California. The concerts are all organized by musician Neil Young and his...
Review posted on 2nd January 2007
Califone - Roots and Crowns
Califone Roots and Crowns Album Review Into a space that Beck and Wilco have made their own storm Califone - a roots rock pop space full of rhythm, atmosphere and hypnotic melody. Roots and Crowns...
Review posted on 2nd January 2007
Oasis - Stop The Clocks
OasisStop The ClocksAlbum ReviewOne can only presume that this is a double CD built by committee. Unfortunately for us, it is a committee that seems determined not to spoil any future compilation. Noel Gallagher always...
Review posted on 19th December 2006
Chris Whitley and the Bastard Club - Reiter In
Chris Whitley and the Bastard ClubReiter In Album ReviewChris Whitley died last year, at the age of 45, leaving behind a wonderful raw music legacy, one in which anguish and intensity were communicated through slide...
Review posted on 19th December 2006
David & The Citizens - Until The Sadness Is Gone
David & The CitizensUntil The Sadness Is GoneAlbum ReviewA Swedish band that sound like the best of American indie-pop. Like Danish bands The Figurines and Epo-555, David & The Citizens manage a lovely bounce and...
Review posted on 19th December 2006
Various Artists - Mike Rea's, Top 12 albums of the year 2006
2006 - Top 12Mike Rea's top 12 albums of the year.Every year, it gets harder to compile a 'Best Of' list. With more music, and more great music, being released with every new year, the...
Review posted on 14th December 2006
Sufjan Stevens - Songs For Christmas
Sufjan StevensSongs For ChristmasAlbum ReviewSufjan Stevens has been recording Christmas songs since 2001, and these have trickled out annually, but for the first time they are collected in a (rather gorgeously packaged set). So, if...
Review posted on 11th December 2006
Bert Jansch - The Black Swan
Bert JanschThe Black SwanAlbum ReviewIt's a big year for the 'return to form' of the old folkies, and Bert is about as old as they get. But, just as Dylan's Modern Times is actually a...
Review posted on 11th December 2006
Jeremy Enigk - World Waits
Jeremy EnigkWorld WaitsAlbum ReviewEnigk was the lead singer and songwriter for a cult alternative band called Sunny Day Real Estate, a band whose intensity was mesmeric. Like a lot of indie songwriters, Enigk's ability when...
Review posted on 4th December 2006
Neil Young - At the Fillmore 1970 Live
Neil Young and Crazy HorseAt the Fillmore 1970 [Live] Album ReviewTalk about re-releases. This is a legendary show, revealing Young at his best, and the best of his occasional backing band Crazy Horse, when led...
Review posted on 4th December 2006
Scrapomatic - Alligator Love Cry
ScrapomaticAlligator Love CryAlbum ReviewMinnesota duo Scrapomatic build on Nawlins jazz and urban blues to create a delightfully easy-listening album of soulful music. In one way, Alligator Love Cry sounds like the Muppets doing blues and...
Review posted on 4th December 2006
the beatles - Love
The Beatles Love Album Review Let's face it - there's not a Beatles album that, were it to be released by a new band today, wouldn't be an album of the year. So, this is...
Review posted on 27th November 2006
Aimee Mann - One More Drifter In The Snow
Aimee Mann One More Drifter In The Snow Album Review If the thought of another Christmas with Slade and George Michael fills you with dread, there is some salvation this year in the form of...
Review posted on 27th November 2006
Andrew Bird - Fingerlings 3
Andrew Bird Fingerlings 3 Album Review Between albums, Andrew Bird has been steadily releasing Fingerlings discs - collections of odds and ends, mostly live - via andrewbird.net. Now that would not be especially interesting in...
Review posted on 27th November 2006
The Race - Be Your Alibi
Artist - The RaceAlbum - Be Your AlibiAlbum ReviewWhat a great time for British music - this band from Reading could just be the next step on the road set out by Franz Ferdinand, Bloc...
Review posted on 21st November 2006
Tom Waits - Orphans (3 CD set)
Tom WaitsOrphans (3 CD set)Album ReviewTom Waits is a true modern musical legend, and when the record company mentioned a triple CD, it was expected that this would be a kind of career retrospective. However,...
Review posted on 21st November 2006
JJ Cale - The Road to Escondido
Don't go into this disc expecting Clapton plus some JJ Cale - The Road To Escondido is a JJ Cale album with some Clapton in it. Clapton barely raises a sweat in among the dozens...
Review posted on 21st November 2006
Maggie Reilly - Rowan
Maggie ReillyRowanAlbum ReviewAll anyone should need to know about Maggie Reilly is that she was the voice of Mike Oldfield's Moonlight Shadow and Family Man. If you remember those songs, you already know how gorgeously...
Review posted on 13th November 2006
Peter Frampton - Fingerprints
Peter FramptonFingerprintsAlbum ReviewIf the name Peter Frampton brings back memories of a rather odd 1970s Vocoder-drenched Show Me The Way, don't worry. This is the same man, but he seems to have spent the years...
Review posted on 13th November 2006
The Drones - Gala Mill
The DronesGala MillATPThis is excellent stuff. A band from Melbourne, Australia, who beat Wolfmother to the Australian Music Prize with their last album, this third album moves the game on hugely. A swaggering Stones-y rock...
Review posted on 13th November 2006
The Charlatans - Forever. The Singles
The CharlatansForever. The SinglesAlbum ReviewThe Charlatans always had short shrift in the Mancunian fame stakes - somewhere behind Oasis, Stone Roses and Happy Mondays - and it would be fair to say, that, like James,...
Review posted on 6th November 2006
Richmond Fontaine - Obliteration By Time
Richmond FontaineObliteration By TimeAlbum ReviewMany bands yearn for those heady early days when it was all fun and the songs were so much better to play. Very few actually go back to those first songbooks...
Review posted on 6th November 2006
The Beautiful Girls - We're Already Gone
The Beautiful GirlsWe're Already GoneAlbum ReviewThe Beautiful Girls (none of whom are girls, and none of whom could even remotely be described as beautiful) are a band from Australia, and their music is well worth...
Review posted on 6th November 2006
Radio 4 - Enemies Like This
Radio 4Enemies Like ThisAlbum ReviewRadio 4's debut, Gotham!, was rightly held up to be something special, but the sophomore slump definitely hit them on the follow-up, Stealing of a Nation. Here, they reprise the Joy...
Review posted on 30th October 2006
Duke Robillard - Guitar Groove-A-Rama
Duke RobillardGuitar Groove-A-RamaAlbum ReviewThere are still guitarists out there whose craft makes their albums well worth a listen. Duke Robillard is probably the finest proponent of T Bone Walker's blues style, and was chosen to...
Review posted on 30th October 2006
Akron Family - Meek Warrior
Akron/ FamilyMeek WarriorAlbum ReviewImagine, if you will, that the musicians of O Brother Where Art Thou? decided to embrace modern rock and the hedonistic Spanish street rhythms of Springsteen's The Wild, The Innocent. If that...
Review posted on 30th October 2006
Entrance - Prayer of Death
EntrancePrayer of DeathAlbum ReviewWhy just do spiritual blues when you can wrap in a more-than-slightly-manic cosmic lunacy too? Entrance is the project of Guy Blakeslee, a self-taught singer and musician from Los Angeles, and Prayer...
Review posted on 23rd October 2006
The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
The Hold SteadyBoys and Girls in AmericaAlbum ReviewIt is a little-known fact that Bruce Springsteen is a big fan of LA rock punk band Social Distortion. If you ever wondered how Born To Run would...
Review posted on 23rd October 2006
Twilight Singers - Powder Burns
Twilight SingersPowder BurnsAlbum ReviewRecorded in New Orleans a few months after Hurricane Katrina, generators standing by to supply electricity, and in Milan, Powder Burns is former Afghan Whigs lead man Greg Dulli's finest work in...
Review posted on 23rd October 2006
I Am Ghost - Lovers' Requiem
I Am GhostLovers' RequiemAlbum ReviewWhere does confidence come from? On the evidence of this album, somewhere near Southern California, and So-Cal band I Am Ghost. From the opening baroque monastic chant through Goth-y metallic thrash...
Review posted on 16th October 2006
Suggested
Leisure Festival - Dreamland in Margate
On the same day that Glastonbury welcomed back Margate's adopted sons, The Libertines, Margate itself put on it's very own Leisure Festival as it...
Pretty Fierce talk to us about collaborating with Doja Cat, emetophobia, arena tours and staying "true to yourself" [EXCLUSIVE]
Sheffield's very own all girl group Pretty Fierce are still on a high after the recent release of their debut single - 'Ready For Me'.
Will Varley & Jack Valero - The Astor Theatre Deal Live Review
Three nights before the end of his current tour Will Varley returned to his home town of Deal to delight a sold out crowd in The Astor Theatre.
WYSE talks to us about her "form of synaesthesia", collaborating with Radiohead's Thom York and the prospect of touring with a band [EXCLUSIVE]
With only a few days to go before Portsmouth based songstress and producer WYSE releases her new single, 'Belladonna', we caught up with her to find...
Advertisement
Bay Bryan talks to us about being a "wee queer ginger", singing with Laura Marling and being inspired by Matilda [EXCLUSIVE]
Colorado raised, Glasgow educated and Manchester based Bay Bryan is nothing if not a multi-talented, multi-faceted artist performing as both...
Keelan X talks to us about staying true to "your creative vision", collaborating with Giorgio Moroder and being "a yoga nut" [EXCLUSIVE]
Former Marigolds band member Keelan Cunningham has rediscovered his love of music with his new solo project Keelan X.
![Luke De-Sciscio talks to us about having the courage to be yourself, forgiving that which is outside of one's control and following whims [EXCLUSIVE]](https://images.contactmusic.com/images/home/homepage/luke-de-sciscio-abof-a.jpg "Luke De-Sciscio talks to us about having the courage to be yourself, forgiving that which is outside of one's control and following whims [EXCLUSIVE]")
Luke De-Sciscio talks to us about having the courage to be yourself, forgiving that which is outside of one's control and following whims [EXCLUSIVE]
Wiltshire singer-songwriter Luke De Sciscio, formally known as Folk Boy, is set to release is latest album - 'The Banquet' via AntiFragile Music on...
Annie Elise talks to us about the challenges a female producer has to face and "going through a year of grief and sickness" [EXCLUSIVE]
Electronic music pioneer and producer Annie Elise says that the release of her first EP - 'Breathe In, Breathe Out' feels "both vulnerable and...
Advertisement
