Author: Jon Kean Page 2
Father John Misty - Pure Comedy Album Review
William Blake wrote, in "Auguries of Innocence", about mankind's potential 'To see a World in a grain of sand/ And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/ Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/ And...
Review posted on 12th April 2017
Shock Machine - 2017 Interview
Shock Machine is the exciting new project of James Righton, once the keyboard player of 2007 Mercury-Prize-winning nu-ravers, Klaxons. Earning possibly the coolest prize in Christendom can never be an out-and-out curse, but arguably, for...
Interview posted on 10th April 2017
Yorkston Thorne Khan Komedia Arts Cafe, Bath 05.04.17 Live Review
If words like 'fusion' and 'experimental' fill you with creeping dread, then you clearly haven't seen Yorkston/Thorne/Khan live. On paper, the prospect of melding folk, jazz and Indian music is a potentially trippy prospect. I...
Review posted on 10th April 2017
Diet Cig - Swear I'm Good At This Album Review
Diet Cig's 2015's "Over Easy" EP was a rip-roaring, rough-and-ready, lo-fi, five-song strop. Alex Luciano and Noah Bowman's fizzy punk-pop also had a chunky, sh*t-kicking bolshiness, born of the carefree joy of being in a...
Review posted on 10th April 2017
Desperate Journalist - 2017 Interview
The London-based post-punk four-piece band, Desperate Journalist, first caught my attention when I heard "Hollow" on the radio and immediately crested a majestic wave of Proustian 80s/90s reminiscence. That's not to say they're a throwback...
Interview posted on 6th April 2017
Aimee Mann - Mental Illness Album Review
When Aimee Mann kept hearing her songs pigeonholed as remorselessly miserable, she could have capitulated to peer pressure and started channelling her inner Pharrell. Instead she gave herself “permission to write the saddest, slowest, most...
Review posted on 4th April 2017
Desperate Journalist - Louisiana, Bristol 29.03.17 Live Review
The upstairs room of the Louisiana pub in Bristol has hosted many a band on the early slopes of a mighty ascent. You only have to browse at the commemorative posters downstairs to see names...
Review posted on 4th April 2017
The Moonlandingz - Interplanetary Class Classics Album Review
Speaking recently about the "Sweet Saturn Mine" video, Sean Lennon said, 'We were just trying to entertain ourselves. The whole thing was just having fun,' thus capturing the spirit of The Moonlandingz's album. I'm not...
Review posted on 1st April 2017
The Lemon Twigs Thekla, Bristol 23.03.17 Live Review
If you haven't been to the Thekla, you're missing out. If you haven't seen the Lemon Twigs, you're definitely missing out. A former cargo ship, then home to Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's Vivien Stanshall, the...
Review posted on 29th March 2017
PINS - Bad Thing EP Review
What are you most likely to do when you've had a few drinks? Finally tell someone you find them utterly irresistible (or utterly resistible)? Buy a vintage Triumph Stag off eBay, even though you can't...
Review posted on 25th March 2017
Kris Drever - Interview
When a Kris Drever solo album comes out, it's a relatively rare delight. If you take the intervals between "Black Water" in 2006, "Mark the Hard Earth" in 2010 and 2016's "If Wishes Were Horses"...
Interview posted on 23rd March 2017
Wasuremono - Interview
One afternoon in Autumn 2016, a Japanophile mate texted me, saying she'd heard the band name, Wasuremono on 6Music. She'd got wildly over-excited, quickly got over the disappointment that they weren't the new Shonen Knife...
Interview posted on 20th March 2017
Conor Oberst - Salutations Album Review
If ever your day's too peachy and you're missing out on that sense of feeling wounded, cold and desperately alone, then last year's achingly beautiful "Ruminations" ought to be your go-to album. Written in snowbound...
Review posted on 20th March 2017
Kris Drever Victoria Hall, Radstock 10.03.17 Live Review
On the map, the town of Radstock may be close to Glastonbury, but close to Glastonbury it ain't. What manifold joys, therefore, to catch Orcadian folk titan, Kris Drever at the town's small but perfectly-formed...
Review posted on 17th March 2017
Laura Marling - Semper Femina Album Review
"Semper Femina" (Always a woman) is a phrase reclaimed by Laura Marling and something she had tattooed on her leg ten years ago. It originally formed part of a Virgil line that shares the philosophy...
Review posted on 14th March 2017
The Magnetic Fields 50 Song Memoir Album Review
Remember the reaction you got to that five-opera ring cycle you composed, with yourself as the main protagonist? That one you performed to your extended family at your 21st birthday party? It went on until...
Review posted on 10th March 2017
Desperate Journalist - Grow Up Album Review
In May 1979, Paul Morley slated The Cure's "Three Imaginary Boys" with such pretentious savagery (Google it and puke) that Robert Smith took the next available opportunity, a Peel Session, to bite back, composing "A...
Review posted on 10th March 2017
Scott Matthews - Komedia, Bath 02 March 2017 Live Review
Launching his 2017 solo tour, Scott Matthews chose the Edwardian grandeur of the Grade I listed Bath Komedia. It's eleven years since his debut album "Passing Stranger" marked him out as a composer and executor...
Review posted on 3rd March 2017
Rag'n'Bone Man - Human Album Review
If there was a box that up-and-coming artists could mark, to opt out of the various 'Next Big Thing' awards that are doled out annually, I wonder how many artists would happily tick it. Having...
Review posted on 1st March 2017
Peaness - Interview
Peaness (that's '-ness' not '-nis' - titter ye not) is a UK three-piece band, based in Chester. Jess (bass and vocals), Balla (guitar and vocals) and Rach (drums) are part way through a UK tour...
Interview posted on 1st March 2017
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Flying Microtonal Banana Album Review
On "Flying Microtonal Banana", King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have created the soundtrack to the end of the Earth, or to that episode of The Magic Roundabout when Zebedee forgot to take his beta...
Review posted on 24th February 2017
Band of Horses - Bristol O2 Academy 21.02.17 Live Review
"Well, hello there, you beautiful bastards, how are you?" greeted Ben Bridwell as he took to the stage at the O2 Academy, like he'd entered a bar full of familiar faces. And so the smooth...
Review posted on 22nd February 2017
Ryan Adams - Prisoner Album Review
Ryan Adams was eight in 1982. You can imagine him in his room, strumming his tennis racquet (not a euphemism) to "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake, or shadow-boxing to "Eye of the Tiger" by...
Review posted on 20th February 2017
Vant - Interview
London-based four-piece, Vant, release their debut album, "Dumb Blood" on February 17th. Annie Mac has bestowed five of their songs with the accolade 'Hottest Record in the World' on Radio 1 and they have just...
Interview posted on 17th February 2017
Loyle Carner - Bristol Motion 12.02.17 Live Review
Before Sunday's gig at Bristol Motion, a 'taxi dad' tweeted that he was dropping his son off at the Loyle Carner gig and had four hours to kill in Bristol. Within minutes Carner tweeted, "A...
Review posted on 14th February 2017
Vant - Dumb Blood Album Review
Vant's debut album, "Dumb Blood", is awash with piss and vinegar. It surfs the tsunami of contemporary global spleen and seeks to awake a sleeping generation from its mute inertia. To say the band is...
Review posted on 14th February 2017
Sampha - Process Album Review
Political Twittery aside, Sampha Sisay is the big news of 2017 so far. Quiet is the new loud. Modesty is the new egotism. For someone who's been around since 2010, was 4th on the BBC...
Review posted on 9th February 2017
Elbow - Little Fictions Album Review
On 2008's "The Seldom Seen Kid", a solemn Guy Garvey sings 'love you, mate', on "Friend of Ours" - a heart-rending tribute to his late friend, Bryan Glancy. "One Day Like This" reminds us how...
Review posted on 6th February 2017
Ty Segall - Ty Segall Album Review
You never see Ty Segall and Keith Lemon in the same place, do you? Apart from a passing resemblance, there's something capricious and exhilarating that unites the two, characteristics that exemplify Segall's self-titled 2017 album....
Review posted on 31st January 2017
Surfer Blood - Snowdonia Album Review
Surfer Blood rocked up in 2010 with the strident "Astro Coast", the unlikely love child of Sonic Youth and Vampire Weekend. 2013's "Pythons" rode in triumphantly astride Weezer's first two albums. "1000 Palms", in 2015,...
Review posted on 27th January 2017
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...
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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...
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