nrobertson has written the following articles:
For fans of Neko Case or Cat Power, this self-released debut album is full of understated singing, graceful melodies and effortless songwriting.»
This is Ryan Adams today: heart hung from his guitar like a trophy, head still stinging from too many bottles of red and stood in front of a microphone, singing stories from the bottom of his gut.
DiS star writer Neil Robertson gets inside the new one...
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Animals On Wheels (Ninja Tune) member Andrew Coleman's new record relishes what can be done when electronica is used to manipulate organic instruments»
Staggeringly sad and painfully beautiful, "From A Basement On The Hill" is Elliott Smith's final, posthumous release. Neil Robertson writes of what we've lost and the legacy he left behind.»
After a year of knife-wielding, ambulance-chasing and tabloid grave-digging, The Libertines make their long-awaited return. But have the band's well-documented troubles made for a "masterpiece of life-changing rock'n'roll" or a record paralysed by poor production and under-developed songs? Neil Robertson investigates...»
Reimagining 70’s folk as if it were influenced by the barbed blues of Billie Holliday and not just fey whimsy, these sisters' debut conjures bum notes, looped samples, synthetic drum sounds and endless moments of shy, fumbling sweetheart beauty.»
Like it or not, Keane's debut "Hopes and Fears" is going to be one of the biggest-selling albums of the year. But are they a bunch of bland, no-hope bed-wetters or heartfelt romantics? This week, DiS gives two very different, hopelessly biased opinions about the newest stars of British rock.»
It's all about image. Joy Zipper look like a pair of bohemian heroes who met over bottled beer in some over-crowded style bar. Finally released being delayed for 12 months, does their second album prove there's more behind the glossy sheen?»
A tender, smouldering album of drifting, rudderless beauty. Icelandic dreamsters Múm return with their third album.»
An album of skewed and strange electronica from the former member of ex-British post-rockers Gwei Lo»
Touring, fast food adverts and sweets. This is part II of DiS's Shins interview.»
Gorgeous whispersome folksy niceness from some bloke in Bath.»
Remaking his Palace material with a team of Nashville sessionists, Will Oldham returns with one of his strangest, strongest albums to date»
"I'm just biding my time 'till I get my death-metal band started!"
On the eve of their first ever UK show, DiS caught a glimpse of the mad brilliance behind The Shins. In the first of a two-part interview, we discover their decade-long history, their musical influences, and how they're coping with the tear-away success of 'Chutes Too Narrow'.»
On this double album, Lambchop serve up their seventh (and eighth) release in 10 years, but is it an album of blistered, whispered, lingering beauty or the tired sound of band bound up with its own clichés?»
An album for tragic romantics and car-crashed hearts; poets, cynics, drop-outs and drunks - available on import now, and finally given a UK release in March. The Shins' second album is a 30-minute mini-pop-epic, packed with cheap synths, thrift-store strings and stiff-lipped 'la-de-da's.' »
Close your eyes and this record doesn't exist. It's a mirage. An illusion. The late-night wet dream of some A&R weasel, wanting to turn his artists into sad corporate juggernauts. At least, that's what you've been telling yourself...»
They are back. They are not your friends. And honey, if you're looking for the most pioneering, genre-defying record of the year, this is not 'it'.
However, Neil Robertson, pops things into perspective and asks: Why should you let a group of arty, rich-boy prep-school posers force their hyped-up, rip-off rock on you? »
A musical love-heart full of warmth, hope, naivety and denial, and replete with humming harmonics, empty-concert-hall atmospherics and sparse, one-note piano playing. The sound of Joni Mitchell waltzing with the Cocteau Twins, from Sub Pop's fairy princess of dream-pop.»
"What do we see? No light at the end of the tunnel. What we see is the light of a locomotive coming head on at Iraq." They're tearing Saddam's head off. Dragging his skull through the Baghdad streets. Pounding it with shoes and spit and insults. It's early April and they’re interrupting Neighbours»
No longer kissing with tongues. Sex restricted to the same headboard-banging boredom, made bearable through fantasies of fucking someone else. Conversations reduced to reciting workday chores and weather reports, old gossip and new lies; a tax-break marriage, a soul-sapping job and a body that's become a soft, saggi»
"This is the sound of someone losing the plot. Making out that they’re OK when they’re not. You’re going to like it, but not a lot." True story. You're trudging through the graveyard shift in a chip-fat stinking Friday night McDonalds. While sweeping the polythene-packaged shit off the floor and swearin»
So why do you sing in an American accent? There's a silence. Steve Adams has been preparing for this question for two years. He still doesn't know the answer. "I read this interview with [mumbly Scot-folk legend] Alasdair Roberts and he said something like, 'I think it's disgustin»
Warren Ellis does all the right things for all the wrong reasons. In an interview, the Dirty Three's violin-mangling maestro claims he only managed to master his instrument in the vain hope that women might want him. So when he wanders onstage like some long-haired Australian Amadeus, you realise that »
It's the sound of heartbreak. It's the sound of that quiet sob when you realise your 'last-forever' love is slowly wilting; the sound of an adolescent's diary, documenting some unrequited obsession; and the sound of wide-eyed optimism melting into melancholy. 'Give Up' is all these things, but above all, it's th»
Is this a joke? Accompanying the album, 'Hope's press release pleads that it is "not political", presumably because if it was anti-war or had something approaching an opinion, the Bush/Blair-loving, oil-guzzling, blood-baying right-wing wankers that read/write for The Sun wouldn't buy it. So instead, they make t»
Sam Beam is a cheat. As his half hung-over voice wraps itself around album closer 'Muddy Hymnal', guitars slide and strum and waltz with all the wounded beauty of a classic Deep South country-fried folk record. So just as you've got him sussed as some strange bearded loner who calls his songs things like »
Ahmir '?uestlove' Thompson wouldn't know modesty if it shot him in the back with a twelve-gauge. In the sleeve notes, The Roots' turbo-powered, dynamite drummer takes a snide swipe at "all the groups who refuse to do shows with us ever again." This isn't because Philly's finest are potty-mou»
"All you’ve ever done is Yesterday" - John Lennon The pressures of not being dead. You're the living half of the most gigantic, gazillion-selling globe-gobbling scouse-pop partnership of all time. For forty years, you've had to endure pant-wetting, shirt-pulling, voice-box-breaking adulation while your »
