So this is June... and what have you done? So said a paraphrased John Jimbo Lennon... But more to the point - what happened to May? And what did you hear and buy? Cos May offered a fine slew of exciteable recorded joys. There were cartoon apes, mancunian apes and acoustic luddites... Of course, though it's not just the LPs that inform a month in review; there's key gigs, exciting single releases, and big news. So as we expand the historical documentation that these articles portentiously wish to become, here's a selection of May items to mull over...
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Gorillaz - Demon Days Perhaps one of the most long-awaited side projects of all time: five years from the debut, Gorillaz have made an LP of "so many names, so many influences: perhaps unsurprisingly 'Demon Days' is a dizzying, disorientating and sometimes directionless album." - so reckons DiS...
... read Anthony Gibbon's full article |
Team Sleep-
Team Sleep Another side project - this time from beardy rocker Chino Moreno's Team Sleep. It's a bit of an understated grower, which may disappoint some and pleasantly surprise others (depending on which side of the rock divide you're on), but having said that, "It's hardly Team Sleep's fault that so many of the 15 songs on their long-awaited (I hesitate to say eagerly anticipated; those feelings were thrown out with the bathwater back in 2003) debut sound like the dregs of Chino Moreno's creative juices bottled up sometime between 'Deftones' and its predecessor 'White Pony'"...so said we.
.read Mike Diver's full
article |
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Maximo Park- A Certain Trigger
Up, up and pop away! The Newcastle boys offer a debut that's chock full packed with great singles and even greater promise: A DiS man even commented that "A Certain Trigger’ puts Maximo Park firmly above their more obvious contemporaries and pushes the oft-limited boundaries of their sub-genre by creating a record that just feels natural to them, rather than setting out to try and sound like something else specific."
read Colin Robert's full
article |
Belle & Sebastian- Push The Barman To Open Old Wounds A 2-CD collection of Scotland's finest (yes, much better than Franz)'s early EPs. Utterly sumptuous, far reaching stuff. For God's sake, "Most bands would probably rape their own mothers and sell the story just to write anything as good as most of the 'b' sides on any of these seven EPs". So said we...
read Dom Gourlay's full
article |
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Spoon - Gimme Fiction Why are Spoon so criminally underrated? Over a decade of consistantly great indie-rock, four stellar albums, even a guest spot on the O.C soundtrack(!) What do you people want? Blood? Or maybe just another excellent record...
read Jez Burrow's full
article |
Ryan Adams -
Cold Roses We love Ryan Adams. Sometimes we've loved him less so when he's released car-crash disaster records like 'Rock N Roll', but all is forgiven with the double CD effort of 'Cold Roses'. It is in fact, "Ryan Adam’s finest record since Heartbreaker; a sprawling, sighing, regret-riddled epic that trawls through themes of freedom and escape, hope and loss, love and its many disguises."
read Neil Robertson's
full article |
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Cut Copy- Bright Like Neon Love
One of year's best records? According to this review "Cut Copy’s debut mixes emotion and technology to perfection, with 12 tracks of electro-pop that you’re going to hear in every Urban Outfitters, vintage clothes shop and fashion parade for the next six months." Sounds like one of the year's best records anyway...
. read Euan Mclean's
full article |
Young Offenders Institute-
We're The Young Offenders Barely literate thug pop from the wildest parts of Manchester... but disgracefully catchy and exuberant: Just a little DiS warning incase they take over your summer. Or your council estate... read Michaela Annot's full
article |
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Arctic Monkeys- Five Minutes With The Arctic Monkeys Cos, despite the terrible name, everyone loves the Arctic Monkeys these days, don't they? Even us, with the reviewer declaring that: "If five minutes with Arctic Monkeys is this much fun, god help us when the little blighters finally get around to releasing an album." Y'see? Even us...
read Rob Webb's
full article
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White Rose Movement
- Love Is A Number
A band so trendy that they might just implode before they do anything else. However, 'Love Is A Number' is an infectious 'dance floor filler' (who we love that phrase), that is so NOW, that it might just be yesterday already...
read Gen Williams'
full article |
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News:
We all felt so fucking smug when The Bravery fail to hit the top 40 but less so when Crazy Frog went to no.1. There was a shot in the arm for Reading/Leeds as they announced their line up for the Carling stage, an equal slab of coolness for MTV when they told everyone about their rockfeedback TV
(drop your favourite in there), Coldplay banging on about the corporate evil of EMI, and news about record maker Paul Epworth becoming a music mogul with the Mystery Jets.
DiScuss: What are your moments/records/sporting events of the month? Which are the
best/worst?