The Underground Stage
Subcult offer up their debut release damn near fully-formed, playing with a confidence and swagger that a new band really shouldn’t possess. This is big and shiny alt-rock, with some extremely well-constructed songwriting threading through the whole thing. There’s also the occasional sweary word too which – regardless of what anyone else tells you – […]
I love this record! That staccato intro drops you straight in the deep end with no warning, just a straight plunge directly into the fun and games. Even though you don’t get a chance to even warm up, you’re off and running alongside them, dancing like a goon and sputtering for breath. If you can’t […]
If the The Pinheads were Primal Scream, this is the bit where they can do stuff like “Rocks”. It’s a cover of an Elvis Costello track but it’s a huge shift from that where-the-fuck-did-THAT-come-from stage into the part where we all end up dancing to them without realising it’s the same band. The horrorshow keyboards […]
Tired Lion do nothing by halves, and their newest one (with an album to come in November, hurray!) is as reliably full tilt as ever. With its hair flying and its throat scratched it strains at its leash until it snaps, sending it careening off headlong into the china cabinet. Anything with the Tired Lion […]
Few records are likely to get both hipsters and hen parties dancing together, but Hope D has not only written a song that’s about what people share in common, but a song that can be shared by totally different people. It’s a pop banger, it’s punk as fuck, it’s got a soft core, but it’s […]
This spicy little pinger bounces about all over the place, rattling around somewhere between the Spiderman theme tune and the nighclub scene in Austin Powers. It’s all the good bits of The Go Team, with added horns and dizzily grinning danceability. A surefire way to inject some fun into your day.
Snark’s latest is a lot more upbeat (and contains a lot less 90s cynicism) than its Nirvana-quoting title would imply. This is a rumbly, thrummy pleasure of a track, where the guitars and the vocals take their turns in soaring high and wide, and it’s packed a lot of pleasure into its four walls. Following […]
Lucinda R brings just a guitar and vocals to this track but manages to make it sound near-on orchestral. The vocal might be as delicate as a bird’s wing but it still completey fill the space, merging and intermingling with the metallic guitar tones that both hold the vocal up and give it room. This […]
I love head-fakes like this. Starting off with a plaintive bit of emo, this song quickly shifts up through its gears and ends up somewhere else. You start off thinking this song is wearing a cardigan and having a nice cup of tea, but end up realising that it’s half-naked and hanging from the damn […]