BEST OF THE REST
Other new releases out this month.
Magic Bus
The Earth Years
Psychedelically inclined in similar style to today’s Gong, Magic Bus offer a quintessentially English, comfortably trippy, Canterbury scenic, Magical Mystery Tour. 7/10
Richard Davies & The Dissidents
BUCKETFULL OF BRAINS
Human Traffic
Ex-Snakes/Tiny Monroe guitarist Davies takes centre stage on a debut collection of louche and languid, 80s-tinged, blue-collar, mid-Atlantic Americana. Hook-heavy, casually classy, if habitually laid back. 7/10
Wyldlife
Year Of The Snake
Obviously there’s a down-side to derivative, but when it’s done this well it’s damn near irresistible. Punk spirit, power-pop exuberance, glam swagger, priapic rock cockiness. What’s not to love? 8/10
Pabst
Deuce Ex Machina
Glam-sneered garage swagger propels the unmistakable sound of selfrighteous punkoid agitpop. Occasionally fuzzed beyond reason, these Berlin-based Anglophiles often recall early Supergrass. 7/10
The Spitfires
ACID JAZZ
Life Worth Living
A wide-screen production, a modishly snotty home counties threepiece, an emphatic horn section and a third-hand band name. Billy Sullivan’s up-front vocal (part Cope, part Weller) positively scintillates with timely lyrical angst. 7/10
Bananagun
The True Story Of Bananagun
Melbourne-based Afro-Beat laced with en-vogue antipodean psychxotica? The intention seems sound, there’s verve and virtuosity, but the results sound thin, contrived and ultimately laborious. 5/10
Häxan
White Noise
Promising romp-out-of-the-blocks opener Damned If You Do goes for the throat with its sheer exuberance and compulsive drums, but as the album plays out, identi-rock cliché tends to outweigh invention. 5/10
Bo Ningen
Sudden Fictions
Cerebral and discomforting, this fourth blurt of engaging complexity from the London-based Japanese quartet blurs lines between wilful NYC no wave and mesmeric motorick. Bobby Gillespie guests. 7/10
Remo Drive
A Portrait Of An Ugly Man
Minnesota’s Remo Drive characterise their distinctly post-popcore indie hooks with a desert-rock sensibility by utilising a Morriconeinformed guitar sound palette and Johnny Marr ingenuity. 6/10
Tremendous
HORRENDOUS
Relentless
Positively sparking with the heroically overstated grand dynamics of glam, this audacious debut boasts unshakeable hooks, guitar solos that belong on pedestals and engaging displays of epic emotion. 8/10
Black Orchid Empire
LONG BRANCH
Semaphore
There’s no shortage of grand gestures here. Epic moments abound, dynamics are super-saturated with hyper-cranked rock immensity, and the London-based trio’s Tool-ambitious, sci-fi-inspired material suits, and deserves, heroic realisation. 8/10
Suzie Stapleton
NEGATIVE PROPHET/CARGO
We Are The Plague
Merging Inger Lorre’s dark subterranean glamour with Patti Smith’s driven poetic spirit, Australian-born Stapleton (along with Righteous Mind bassist Gavin Jay and Stranglers drummer Jim Macauley) delivers beguiling gothic blues soundscapes. 7/10