Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews

THE MORNING LINE – Stars

Posted on by
Reply

There’s so much new music being released in the modern world, it’s become all too easy to miss the good stuff. This fact hasn’t escaped The Morning Line. Their 2026 release ‘Stars’ provides a handy recap of the best bits of the San Franciscan band’s catalogue, even stretching as far as including a couple of the year’s singles. It’s more than a standard compilation, though; for those who’ve been on board for a while, there’s still interest, since ‘Stars’ goes to the effort of remixing some of the previously released stuff to bring it up to scratch. With that in mind, and whichever way you look at it, ‘Stars’ has all the makings of a career defining disc, showcasing a superb blend of college rock, power pop and other retro sounds.

Continue reading →

HOWARD JONES – Like To Get To Know You Well: Live At High Wycombe Town Hall

Posted on by

Much like its predecessor ‘In Japan’, ‘Like To Get To Know You Well’, the second long form visual release from Howard Jones to be released in 1984, spent far too many years stuck in a VHS limbo as far as UK audiences are concerned. It was given a Laserdisc release in Japan, but would be over thirty years later that the show would finally make its hi-def debut in Britain. Eventually brought to the deserving fans via Cherry Red Records’ extensive HoJo reissue programme which has yielded – among other things – huge box sets of ‘Humans Lib’ and ‘Dream Into Action’, and a lavish 5CD set of BBC related recordings, the long overdue reissue goes the extra mile by coupling the original video material with a full CD soundtrack for the very first time.

Continue reading →

FROM UNDER CONCRETE KINGS – Impulse Tension EP

Posted on by

Back in those dismal days of the 2020 pandemic and everything going into lockdown, the world had no end of great music to provide in-home entertainment. One of that year’s more interesting metal releases came from From Under Concrete Kings (you have to wonder how many different combinations of words were considered to create that acronym), which mixed elements of hardcore and groove metal with the artiness of bands like Between The Buried & Me to share something that not only had a great energy, but was far less predictable than “the norm”.

Continue reading →

EDDIE SKULLER – Blind Love EP

Posted on by

For the uninitiated, the Tom Waits catalogue can seem rather daunting. Not only is Tom blessed with a sometimes challenging voice, but his albums have seen the legendary singer songwriter’s style change over time. His earliest albums present him as the ultimate bar room balladeer with a relatively clean voice; over the course of the 70s, his delivery becomes more ragged, more obtuse even, despite the core style of the music remaining the same. Into the 80s, Tom began to channel Kurt Weill and his music became more interesting, more rhythmic, a world away from the man who gave us ‘Ol’ 55’. By the end of the 90s and beyond, Waits almost sounded like a man working within a universe of his own: fans were as likely to hear him shouting his way through something in German to a musical backdrop deserving of a pirate shanty as they were to hear him storytelling at the piano.

Continue reading →

KURT BAKER – Wonder Woman / When Fantasy Calls

Posted on by

When Kurt Baker relocated from Maine to Madrid, he embarked on a very important musical journey. Not only did the formation of The Kurt Baker Combo allow him to experiment with a slightly rougher garage rock sound compared to his US based KB Band, but he also stretched out further, collaborating with power poppers Bullet Proof Lovers, sharing some excellent punk as a member of the K7s, and even appearing on recordings by Spanish punks Neuvo Catecismo Católico. In all, it was a massively prolific time.

Continue reading →