Bankrupt is Phoenix’s 5th album in a career spanning fourteen years – but it’d be fair to say that many people might think it was their sophomore; because, let’s face it, it wasn’t until the bands Grammy winning Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix in 2009 that they really became pop-stars. With that album, they forayed from guitar...

Wilberforces return with a mini album – and the it’s very much worthy of the honour of being local independent label Muzai Records first 12″ vinyl release. These songs are creeping and disconcerting. Sonically fairly stripped back – a guitar and drums and Thoms thinly-breathed vocals fly to the edge of fully fledged guitar-pop gems...

It’d be fair to say that previous output from British duo Hurts has been a bit, umm, how to say, like the YSL fragrance Jazz advertising circa late eighties / early nineties. Now, by all means, that is not, in any way, supposed to be a criticism – shit, I used to bathe in the...

Sydney trio PVT apparently used to have vowels; depending on what you choose to believe the change was either due to threats of legal action or because there’s a character limit on Twitter. They also used to be primarily an instrumental electronic band; but now bassist Richard Pike has stepped front and centre to offer...

I am really good at making typing mistakes. But I’ve been doing a little bit of reading lately, in respect of this new album, Sam Beam’s fifth under the Iron & Wine moniker, and the most impressive typo keeps on cropping up. Whoever is typing types the letters ‘u-n-l-i-k-e-l-y’ instead of the letters ‘a-w-e-s-o-m-e” in...

Lots of people have said that lead track One Way Trigger, when it was released earlier this year, sounded like A-Ha… and I’m pretty sure that they didn’t mean that in a complimentary way. Then The Strokes released All The Time and those people said it was a “return to what The Strokes should sound...

KURT VILE’s new album’s title might be, at first glance, well, a bit dubious, but once you’ve listened to it, it makes sense – it actually does feel like it says on the cover. I have to say I am enjoying the change of season – especially these past few mornings, sunny but with a...

What I can’t help but feel, in listening to Delta Machine, Depeche Mode’s thirteenth album, and, the third in a trilogy of records produced by Ben Hillier, is the juxtaposition of a band whose career is defined by a futuristic aesthetic clashing with their actual vintage. Depeche Mode were an act of innovation, yet, listening...