A Month in Records: May 2005

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

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

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

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

Arctic Monkeys- Five Minutes With The Arctic Monkeys

read Rob Webb's full article

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