DiS Recommends: The best of February 2006

The Broken Family Band - Balls
Finally getting the attention they deserve, The Broken Family Band have produced an album that feels like both a series of punkist vignettes and a narrative of a skewed, rusty forthrightness, all the time married to a rare sense of how to construct a series of tracks that are, essentially, pop at heart.
Read Joe Shooman's full article

3hostwomexicansandatinofspanners - Pegasus Bridge
These are but four men but their might rivals ancient continent-conquering armies; their way with the riff is basic to the ear but bloody effective on the body. Shake a leg, y'all, come firewalk this way.
Read Michael Diver's full article

volcano! - Beautiful Seizure
The formula for this album is pretty simple, really. Take the sum of all of your favourite records since you started listening to music seriously, rip out the filler and make an LP containing only the heart-wrenching, ear-pounding, mind-bending and all-too-beautiful epochs, condense it to 55 minutes and unleash it on an unsuspecting journalist who, intrigued, plays the album once and listens to nothing else for months.
Read Colin Roberts' full article

Various, DJ Scotch Egg, Germlin, Doddodo - Trade And Distribution Almanac Volume 3
If you tried dancing to anything on Trade And Distribution Almanac Volume 3, Adaadat's latest in a row of indispensable roster round-ups, then you’d probably look like an upside-down pneumatic drill and feel run over once the whole thing shudders to a halt. But by lordy, this is so brilliant it'd be worth it.
Read Thomas Blatchford's full article

Devics - Push the Heart
Yes, I know I’ve not been wholly faithful, but you must understand: neither were you. “Don’t think of what we can’t be,” you told me so soon, going back to him, your Dustin; to his piano so in mourning whenever you stepped from its side to seduce me with a voice so divine...
Read Michael Diver's full article

65daysofstatic - Radio Protector
When a band like 65daysofstatic release singles, it must take an age to decide exactly what to use. The band produce albums that beg to be listened to as an album, the songs hold their context in an album's scope and to remove them from their surroundings can easily prove disastrous. Not so here.
Read Colin Roberts' full article

Regina Spektor - Us
With a voice to die for and a lyric sheet from somewhere only she knows, artists like Regina Spektor don't come along too often.
Read Jordan Dowling's full article

Howling Bells - Wishing Stone
Eventually the chorus will reel you in as Joel Stein's lead guitar mimics his sister's voice to produce an apocalyptic cocktail of aural delight...
Read Rob Webb's full article

Attack + Defend - Owl EP
Every once in a while something special emerges from out of the blue and hits you straight between the eyes like a tornado tearing through a skyscraper. Step forward Cardiff based four piece Attack + Defend then, the demolition man's wet dream it seems...
Read Dom Gourlay's full article

Blood Red Shoes - Stitch Me Back/Meet Me At Eight
They'll never 'do' a White Stripes and hit the charts with dullardry and rehashed blues choruses; rather, the Shoes will be entertaining us all with a swell line in ballsy punk-tinged heavy pop songs for a good few years yet.
Read Colin Roberts' full article