A is for Alpine , six friends from Melbourne who make bold, twinkling, sophisticated pop music. Their debut almost-self-titled record is a collection of vibrant songs that shimmer...
Morning. From last week: the energetic new album by Pretty & Nice. Genre: pop. Enjoy! (One review here.) Pretty & Nice – Golden Rules for Golden People Filed under: 2013, Pop
Some bands run a cosmic treadmill trying to keep pace with current trends; others are content to keep mining the formulas that brought on their biggest successes. This "classic...
Like Gary Numan meets early XTC on Wire’s Change Becomes Us, an album of songs recorded right after the group’s second LP Chairs Missing. Worsening tensions within and without the...
British art-punks Wire have been around in some configuration at various junctures for the better part of 30 years. While you would think they would just be grumpy old auteurs...
The thirteenth studio record from the Basildon boys sees them mature, shift focus and rejuvenate in the process.
Depeche Mode haven't released an artistically resonant album in a very long while. Since the low-key efforts of 1997's Ultra, it seems the band have been content capitalizing on...
Formed in 1981, Depeche Mode (Martin Gore, Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher) have released 12 studio albums that have reached the Top Ten in over 20 countries, including the US and UK...
Hi again. The fine new album by Depeche Mode is now available all over Europe and in the US. Genre: alternative/electronic. Enjoy! (Note: Check out the new playlist, Spotinews 066...
For a unit that's long been the model of the archetypal studio band, it's no surprise that Depeche Mode's 13th record is another exemplary display of aural wizardry and high...
Today's punk rock has been broken into sub-sub-sub-genres like blackened grindcore, post-emo skramz and reverse-anarcho-alt-garage-neo-cowpunk. Each of these obscure genres place...
More than just another bunch of privileged rich kids slumming it in the grubby world of rock’n’roll
A shimmering denouement of the band’s assiduity; a refined, perfectly sculptured collection of songs that weave in and out of sonic consciousness.
The Mary Onettes has been releasing dreamy indie-pop from Jönköping, Sweden since Swedish label par excellence, Labrador, put out the band's Lost EP in 2006. Seven years and two...
Hi again. From a very recent Spotify update comes the relaxing new album by The Mary Onettes. Genre: dream pop. Enjoy! (Version for FR, GB and US here.) (Oh, and I finally got the...
If you're able to look past the campy facade and accept that this is purely a record of glimmering pop, it'll be something you'll cherish.
Hurts ditch the storytelling in favour of songs about The Agony And Ecstasy Of Being Theo Hutchcraft. High drama follows
Though they existed for less than two years, Toy Love are immeasurably important to the history of New Zealand music. They helped inspire the creation of Flying Nun-- perhaps the...
"Originally a product of Britain's new romantic movement, Depeche Mode went on to become the quintessential electro-pop band of the 1980s. One of the first acts to establish a...
This isn't a new New Order album, exactly. During the long, expensive sessions that produced 2005's Waiting for the Sirens' Call, New Order recorded a small pile of extra material...
The portents were not good. A mini album featuring eight outtakes from New Order's rather lackadaisical 2005 album, Waiting for the Siren's Call hardly made me bubble with...
Pere Ubu return with their first new studio album for over three years in January 2013, the thirty-fifth anniversary of the group's debut ( The Modern Dance ). Lady From Shanghai...
David Thomas wryly claims that Pere Ubu's 15th studio album, Lady From Shanghai, is "dance music fixed", the 'problem' being that dance music "encourages the body to move without...
Good morning. This stellar album by Death in the Afternoon was recently added to Spotify. Genre: synthpop. Enjoy! Death in the Afternoon – Kino Filed under: 2012, Electronic, Pop
One of the long-lost power pop progenitors, Zion, Illinois' Shoes, has had a remarkably consistent 35-year career since releasing its first studio album, Black Vinyl Shoes, way...
In the cold cynical world of Hollywood, music will often save the day. For film directors of every sprocket, their hero is cool customer Elvis Costello. In Motion Pictures...
Funk/punk stars of the '80s New York club scene, the Bush Tetras sold over 30,000 of their debut 7" on the historic 99 Records. As important today as they were over 25 years ago...
A few years back there was a brief uproar in the media over the addictiveness of a well-known energy drink and the hallucinatory effects of its caffeine/taurine content in tired...
Modern musical miracles like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora have made it nearly impossible to listen to, much less appreciate, an album in its full scope. Listeners are incessantly...
Zeros is a highly contagious album that is scandalously uncomfortable, immensely claustrophobic and very, very danceable.
After recording his 2010 self-titled Soft Moon debut alone in his home, Oakland multi-instrumentalist Luis Vasquez put together a band, got some appropriately dark visuals, and...
The Nutty Boys are back again. The prolific Two-Tone band Madness return with their unique brand of ska with elements of soul, AM pop, R&B and mod they've mastered to blend...
Conventional wisdom says an album without "the hits" should be weaker, but in the battle of the Cure's Three Imaginary Boys vs. Boys Don't Cry, one finds a pleasant surprise. For...
San Francisco shoegazers Tamaryn offer more of the same on their second release.
Still a paid-up member of team nu-gaze? Then you're gonna love 'Tender New Signs'
Hello. Since I was a huge fan of their debut album, I’m pleased to report that my top pick of the week is now available for all Spotify users. Genre: dream pop/shoegaze. Enjoy...
Tamaryn may be one of the quietest bands to traipse through the newly ploughed field of indie rock, but that's only because their unfazed take on shoegaze too often gets passed...
Tamaryn is reinventing herself, or at least she's trying. "I call Brett Anderson from Suede my spirit animal," Tamaryn's eponymous frontwoman told Amber Bravo of Fader with regard...
When the Pet Shop Boys made their appearance at the closing ceremonies for this year's Olympics, they were as marvelous as they've ever been, in their spectacle-that-punctures-the...
The Pet Shop Boys hint at their own demise on this self-referential album which might serve as their own eulogy.
On their 1986 breakthrough single "West End Girls," Pet Shop Boys sang about alienation; it was a great dance pop song about feeling lost in their own hometown. Now, 26 years...
When recording My Aim Is True (1977), Elvis Costello was never quite satisfied with having the session men of Graham Parker's the Rumour and Huey Lewis' Clover fill in on what...
This is not the Public Image Limited that you want. But really, how could it be? As much as we'd love to see what so many consider to be the "perfect" lineup of this ever...
The second Twin Shadow LP delivers impressively high-octane pop with an icy heart.
How kind of George W Lewis, AKA Twin Shadow, to provide us with a very public, and very honest, statement as to why you should avoid dating him at all costs. After all, with looks...
Gauzy synths from the 'Top Gun' soundtrack, yearning melodic swoons from the Smiths, pervasive nostalgia from now.
Good morning. The strong new album by Twin Shadow was added for the UK yesterday*. Enjoy! (*It had been available in all other European Spotify countries for a week!) (Version for...
Call it puppy rock: that unexpected bevy of warm feelings that makes an otherwise glam musician pump out an album full of love songs. But for George Lewis, Jr. (aka the sole...
I don't know much about the man who writes Twin Shadow songs, but the man in them doesn't really seem like a good dude. In fact, he's a total dick most of the time. "I don't want...
Twin Shadow morphs into Double Rainbow on his second album, a Technicolor romantic epic that fuel-injects his smooth R’n’B blend with pure rock ‘n’ roll passion.
The quest for the perfect pop song is strewn with the decaying egos of songwriters of yore. On this follow-up to 2010’s excellent ‘Forget’, George Lewis Jr continues on his...
1977 is generally thought of as the birth of punk, or at least when it really exploded, and Wire tapped right into that back-to-basics sound with Pink Flag. 1979, then, was the...