tom_edwards has written the following articles:
The Modfather returns to the fray, signing with Richard Branson's V2. A mere four months after his acrimonious ejection from Independiente, Paul Weller has signed a new worldwide, multi-album deal with V2 Records. A representative from V2 commented, "V2 are very excited to thi»
What is it with these epic Britrock bands? They all seem to make one half-decent album with a couple of pretty strong singles, then wake up one day and decide that it would be a good idea to ‘go all experimental, maaan’. This never works. Just mention Puressence, Geneva, Longpigs or Marion t»
Legendary shoe-gazers My Bloody Valentine reform to finish unreleased material for a new box set... Nearly 12 years after their last new recording was released My Bloody Valentine have reformed, with a line-up of guitarist/songwriters Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher, along with longt»
One of my most vivid (and fond) memories of college was that of pissing my roommate off by playing 'Celebrity Skin' over and over again, while clumsily trying to bash out the songs on a £20 guitar. Almost five years after its release and I’m doing the exact same thing with my friends at uni, albeit with a somewh»
Isn’t it amazing what you can do with a couple of teams of high-profile songwriters? First we had Smash Hits Avril ('Complicated'), then came punk-pop Avril ('Sk8er Boi') and let’s not forget good ol’ Alanis Jnr AKA Power Ballad Avril ('I’m With You'). Wow! Surely that’s everyone»
Oklahoma, USA’s The All-American Rejects come pretty close to sounding how Weezer would if you took away their books and made them watch happy hour TV all day. Relationship-fixated lyrics and saccharine melodies with a formulaic backdrop of production-line guitar noise are very much the order of the day.»
Super-group The Bens (Lee, Folds and Kweller) take time off for their day jobs… In the meantime, singer/guitarist Ben Lee is preparing for the US release of his new album by supporting Fountains Of Wayne on their 16-date jaunt across Amer»
It’s summertime once again and with a new Silver Sun album finally on the horizon, it seems like a good opportunity to wipe the dust off their ’97 eponymous debut. Purveyor of sublime power pop to the core, songwriter James Broad cleverly side-stepped the maligned genre’s artistic boundaries to create one of the»
If opener MC Honky really is an alter-ego of Eels mastermind Mark ‘E’ Everett then boy does he make an effort to persuade us otherwise. There’s the elaborate Abe Lincoln-style costume (complete with apparently authentic bald patch), coupled with his re-appearance with the band after the encore, tha»
You really have to hand it to Damon Albarn: he’s steered his band through a potentially fatal split with its lead guitarist, created an album which effortlessly trumped 13 under critical inspection and still made that crucial (for them) top spot on the albums chart. First single ‘Out Of Time’ was a tr»
It’s a daring deed to title your debut single ‘Overrated’, but thankfully this is a fantastic piece of quirk-pop that easily reaches the heights of Donaghy’s work with the Sugababes. While her former band was making some of the best pop music of last year, their wayward starlet has gone back to basic»
And now to Ben Lee, whose transition and growth since his signing to Grand Royal at age 14 has been a riveting spectacle for the few people that bothered keeping an eye on him. First, let’s be clear: in the gap of four years since his last album, Lee has written the best songs of his career. Some of them t»
Cynics that most of us are, if we’re honest, have probably already written off Churchvill, PA-based The Starting Line. They’re yet another import from the swelling Drive-Thru roster who, for every Finch, have given us two or three New Found Glory-alikes to clog up our already crap-overloaded chart.»
Half an hour earlier, one Andrew Montgomery – the bookish looking former frontman of Britrock nearly men Geneva – wanders around the bar upstairs, his brow furrowed, laughing nervously as he chats with his band. This is Amityville’s first official gig and there are a number of Geneva die-hards scattered a»
