Lovebox 2013: the DiS review
A festival which continues to strut the line between underground-boutique and the hyper-mainstream with remarkable success. »
Articles
RussWarf has written the following articles:
Annie - The A&R EP
The EP lacks a summer-defining chorus, which we’ve come to take as standard from Annie.»
Honey Ltd. - The Complete LHI Recordings (reissue)
You suspect that Honey Ltd. could have delivered a genuinely brilliant record, given time.»
Halo Halo - Halo Halo
A record which, for all the snap and zip of its basic conceits, becomes quite bloated by its halfway mark. »
Jon Hopkins - Immunity
Immunity is an album which puts a well-placed confidence in rewarding the patience of the listener, melding together current club trends with a vulnerable humanity to create an hour-long arc of total immersion.»
Sam Amidon - Bright Sunny South
With Bright Sunny South, Sam Amidon has taken a huge step forward as a folk artist, creating arrangements which preserve his musicianship, while deepening the maturity of his interpretive skills.»
Ghostpoet - Some Say I So I Say Light
Some Say I So I Say Light is the attempt to merge a lone voice into the black of the vast, surrounding landscape, and it succeeds absorbingly well.»
!!! - Thr!!!er
Ultimately, the strongest moments on here are those which are most confident to leap into uncharted waters, as well as those which are equally confident to draw on established strengths.»
Sweet Baboo - Ships
There’s an endearing sense of modesty to a line like “Daniel Johnston has hundreds of great tunes, and I’ve got six”, especially when it’s sung in the chorus of the first song of an 11-track album.»
Simian Mobile Disco - Live
Live ultimately plays more like an accomplished mixtape than it does a live concert.»
Kurt Vile - Wakin' on a Pretty Daze
Wakin' on a Pretty Daze is one of those rare examples of an artist’s uninhibited self-indulgence resulting in an LP which plays firmly to their strengths.»
Lower Plenty - Hard Rubbish
A perfect synthesis of form and content, translating loneliness into 20 minutes of unrelenting intensity.»
After Girls: DiS meets Christopher Owens
Emerging just six months after the shock dissolution of Girls, Lysandre is in many ways a curious album for Christopher Owens to release under his own name for the first time. Following the expansive, rapturous ‘Father, Son, Holy Ghost’, Lysandre’s less-than half an hour of wistful arrangements and girlish backing vocals can easily scan as treading water or even regression for Owens, whose creative momentum seemed unstoppable, making vast leaps in ambition and maturity with each new Girls record he released. For all its merits, Lysandre – telling a road trip story set in 2009, comprised of material written around the same time – acts as a slightly uncomfortable opening statement for Owens as a solo artist, and raises an array of questions about his motivations for leaving Girls, as well as for releasing an album like Lysandre.»
Anaïs Mitchell, Jefferson Hamer - Child Ballads
As a love letter to swirling mythology and the centuries old folk tradition from which Anaïs Mitchell emerges, Child Ballads is gorgeous, beguiling and enrapturing.»
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Dawn McCarthy - What the Brothers Sang
What The Brothers Sang plays like a lovingly-made mixtape taken to the extreme: material so beloved that Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Dawn McCarthy share it with you by actually performing it.»
Concrete Knives - Be Your Own King
The earnestness and warmth of Be Your Own King succeeds in making the record almost as addictive and loveable to hear as it clearly was to perform.»
"We needed a record which reflected how well we can work together"-DiS meets Tegan and Sara
Seventh album Heartthrob isn’t just Tegan and Sara’s most focused and unified record – it’s also their best»
PVT - Homosapien
PVT still frequently show flashes of promise and brilliance, but soon undercut themselves through the poor balance between vocal and musicianship.»
The History Of Apple Pie - Out of View
At its strongest, Out Of View is brilliantly engrossing. But half-baked melodies and bloated structures often don't do enough to invite you into the songs in the first place. Instead the music frequently bludgeons the listener into wondering why the song wasn’t cut dead about three minutes ago. »
Christopher Owens - Lysandre
While it’s hard not to continue wondering what Christopher Owens’ genuinely post-Girls output is going to sound (and feel) like, Lysandre justifies its own existence by virtue of its own wide eyed wonder, its own vulnerability, and its giving sense of heart.»
DiS meets How To Dress Well
Clearly, Tom Krell aka How To Dress Well is an artist who spends a lot more time than most thinking about how the tiniest components of an individual song’s texture provide an affect which contribute to its album’s whole, and to the trajectory of the journey which the listener experiences... »
Various - Christmas Rules
Christmas Rules is as a pleasant evocation of nostalgia, delivered by artists who find both the melancholy and the joy of the season in a collection of spirited performances.»
Rebekka Karijord - We Become Ourselves
Rebekka Karijord joins the small clutch of artists who manage to sound like a pioneer, not a follower.»
Of Montreal - Daughter of Cloud
As far as curiosity pieces go, 18 snapshots of Kevin Barnes at his most filthy and fancy free really is delightfully curious.»
Halls - Ark
When Samuel Howard pushes himself as a producer and instrumentalist most fully, he reaches territory which isn’t just admirably original, but emotionally engrossing. But sadly, for a great deal of Ark, he’s all too willing to snatch and grab from obvious influences»
Ty Segall - Twins
Three LPs into the year, Ty Segall hasn’t yet outstayed his welcome, and still has more pleasure to offer.»
Ben Folds Five - The Sound of the Life of the Mind
Continues Ben Folds’s particularly unwelcome insistence on putting himself more and more squarely in the centre of the arrangements, even as his song writing and piano playing becomes more and more pedestrian.»
Tamara Schlesinger - The Procession
A sincere and legitimate attempt to perform something outside of the parameters of the sound of Tamara Schlesinger's ‘main’ project.»
Fang Island - Major
The exact antithesis of everything which Fang Island have claimed to deliver, or implied that this record would be.»
Passion Pit - Gossamer
Gossamer is a lovesong to the tender heights of feeling at the balmiest time of year; when feeling anything can provoke some sense of wonder and an irrepressible desire to listen to beaming pop music, really loudly, again and again.»