Au Revoir Simone are the living, musical embodiment of a Sofia Coppolla movie. They are the soft focus, peachy toned, sun-streaked swirling sound of gentle, fresh melancholy. They are the gorgeous bittersweet buzz of the most spellbinding episode of unrequited love. They are the warmth and comfort of a friend’s shoulder to rest on at…

With a moniker like a Hoxton Pokemon and the kind of angular haircut you find atop of an American Apparel shop assistant it would be easy to dismiss Micachu as another bit of bleep to soundtrack the next bumming/swearing/snorting scene in ‘Skins’. However, it is not so simple as Jewellery… is an intriguing, beguiling debut

Forget what you think you know. Forget expectations, disappointments and misunderstandings. Forget mindless arbitrators of taste whose idea of award winning -alternative’ pop music is Elbow. On Dark Days/Light Years… Super Furry Animals have constructed their own year zero. Infusing every ounce of musical creativity they have gleaned from eight albums of inventive challenging wonderment,

Blasting through your ears like a well-aimed sparkler, France’s NLF3′s new album is choc full of crackling, intergalactic melodies. Ride On A Brand New Time… is a mind-exhausting musical space odyssey, encompassing everything from Can and Animal Collective to Sonic Youth: they even manage to add a dash of Joe Meek-style reverb for good cosmos-themed

A lot is riding on the slender shoulders of Ms. Pip Brown as she takes to the stage of the Academy on a chilly Thursday eve, for she is The Future’¦.the headband sporting assassin of hoary old skinny-boy guitar rock here to offer us sparkly girl-shaped nuggets of Pop! Alas this does not feature a…

‘I wanted to use the Union Jack as a backdrop but I was told that wouldn’t go down very well’¦I wonder why’¦?’, Childish sighs, ever the contrary devil before launching into another rib-rattling garage gem.
Like his fellow grumpy old stalwart Mark E. Smith, Mr. Childish has been at this racket for an awfully…

(Arts & Crafts)…
With Interpol and Editors having successfully cornered the market in nouveau gloom, worshipping at the feet of the holy trinity of Curtis, McCulloch and Smith, it would seem that Montreal band The Stills were the only ones yet to achieve the success that dreaming of dank bedsits can bring. But in this

It’s not an enviable position, effectively being the Nicola from Girls Aloud of the world’s test-tube perfect indie band. Curly of hair, thick of eyebrow and with an unnerving penchant for holding his guitar a little bit too high, Hammond Jr looked as though he was someone’s geeky cousin filling in ‘til another jacket and haircut arrived to throw some shapes.

As a general rule, truly great pop records must be short: they should hit you with all the power of a juggernaut, then whiz off into the distance, leaving you reeling and lusting for more. There is no room for poncey middle eights or fiddly outros. A good pop album is like a weekend fling:…

Post-rock: bastion of the pretentious, where music is described by fans with such gravity you’d think they were listening to the whispering voice of Jesus trapped in a seashell rather than the musical doodlings of some ex art students.
It seems to be universally accepted that bands who create ‘soundscapes’ as opposed to pop songs…