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Here it is. A single by an artist unknown to me that is just different and interesting enough to make reviewing it a pleasure. This is a track of soulful beauty and a sense of the writer believing in his music rather than writing a song that might be a hit. This is cool. That is a word that is used far too much but in this case there is no better word to sum up both the sound and the feeling of this. Conil has a voice full of earthy emotion and tone making his songs powerful and captivating. Strange Part Of The Country is slow and dirty, dark and moody. It should be heard in basements of bars where the smoking laws are flounted and the audience sits on beaten up sofas sipping luscious cocktails as the band sit on an old wooden chair and are picked out by a harsh white spotlight through streams of smoke. They are a band that should be discovered by walking into a pub because it is raining and you are needing to get into the warm and dry and as you walk through the door, you hear...

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The Electric City are under the same management as Kaiser Chiefs, The Cribs and Franz Ferdinand and certainly this is a band that fits in very well with those bands. Similar in style and likely to appeal to fans of the above mentioned bands, this, their debut single, is full of poppy guitars, big vocals and enough of a catchy sound that the tune will stick in your consciousness after a couple of listens. This is not a new sound, it is not innovative or strange and the band do not have a unique style that sets them out from the rest but this alone does not make them a bad listen. Predictable maybe. A little too much in a mould, certainly, but this is not an unpleasant track and certainly has listen again qualities that make it reasonable. Electro-rock is at the more generally popular of rock and this may work for The Electric City. They have toured with a number of established bands to date, from Fightstar to The Futureheads, and I imagine they have gained a good number of...

extreme metal, black metal, crust punk, kemado records,west coast hardcore punk

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After reading a comment pertaining to my last review (thank you Posh) it prompted me to re-read my previous submissions. It was at this point I realised I was the kind of reviewer that fucked me off - you know, the ones that seem to take no pleasure in anything. I took a step back and decided not to review any more and not to be that reviewer. Unfortunately, and I can only put it down to the hallucinations that come with complete lack of sleep, it apparently slipped my mind to inform anyone in the AltNation hierarchy of my momentous decision and shortly after a package of CDs arrived at my door. Then I had an epiphany! What if, in some sort of cosmic balance see-saw, the AltNation ethereal heard my tortured reviewer cry and, in a fit of pity, sent me a tome of awesomeness for me to dip my pen into? I grabbed the first CD to hand, Into Abaddon by Saviours, and sat back waiting for the positive vibes to flow. I was reading the first line of the promo blurb as the first notes...

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As I’m standing outside the ABC after yet another Nick Harper show, I look down at the scribbled set list that I’m clutching and ask myself the same question that I’m bothered with after every one of his gigs: How the hell is my review going to do that justice? On the car journey home I mused upon the fact that no matter how many times I guide people to his MySpace, no matter how many times I pass a colleague a mix tape, there really is no substitute for the Harper live experience. Not to speak ill of his recorded catalogue, it’s mind blowing in the extreme, but there’s something about this guy when he takes to the stage that sticks two fingers up at convention and pushes the boundaries of what you think is possible from a tenners worth of live entertainment. Fresh back from a record breaking gig at Everest base camp in aid of the Love Hope Strength foundation, Nick launches into No Truth Up In The Mountains and the crowd settles. The anticipation obvious. The essence of one of...

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My first meeting with Levellers frontman Mark Chadwick took place backstage after a gig by friend and fellow musician Nick Harper a few years ago. Lads being lads (and a little the worse for wear), both had been fooling around with a bunch of bananas in a somewhat provocative manner, when he was enlightened to the fact that a journalist was in their midst. A momentary look of horror flashed across his face as he registered that his antics could have just landed him a centre spread in the News of the World. Although the 41-year-old Brighton-based vocalist/guitarist of the folk/punk group that has to date, totalled record sales in excess of 6 million worldwide, and this year celebrate a union that has lasted some 20 years, professes to never reading his press. "No, I don’t!" he laughs, settling down with an already lit Marlboro (he lights another four during the 40-minute interview), at the band's Metway Studios where they are working on their 12th album, Letters From...

A best of from the very best

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I didn't ask to review this CD. I didn't even know it was up for review or even released. I just got it plopped through my maw's front door. Now since I was forced to move back in with my maw, I haven't had anything through to review and she didn't know I did reviews. She found the news very exciting. Her excitement, however, just waned a moment ago when I actually started playing the CD. So it's passed the first test. My maw doesn't like it. My dog Charlie seems to have taken an interest however. As the title would lead you to believe this is a bit of a "best of..." but that's not quite true. There are a total of six new tracks on it and a few rare b-sides and unreleased numbers, a live CD and some extra computer type stuff. A fairly bold move from Berlin's finest but for a band that's spent 20 years traversing the seedy underworld of psychobilly we'd all have been disappointed if we were given a collection of songs we'd all heard before. It's less of a "best...

Exactly what it says on the tin.

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Members of Converge and Piebald's old band.

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According to the blurb this is indie rock that "point blank" refuses to adhere to trends. Really is Fractious Fierce Panda, Livid Meerkat et al traditional indie noise. The dual vocals on a-side our bipolar friends added to the fractious guitars certainly creates an atmosphere worthy of psychiatric labelling. Although the title bipolar is probably a bit inappropriate as the song is fairly unipolar musically. The intro is the most annoying part of the song: jangly sub-C80 era guitar and... well... a whiney, whiney vocal. Thankfully it improves greatly once the drums kick in. Its not a worldbeater but its a nice wee ditty nonetheless. B-side the houseparty scene is killing you reminds me vaguely of Wire. I keep expecting to hear some "disco-esque" bass on this but none is forthcoming - I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing... It's your fairly standard B-side; fair. A decent tune that could benefit from more attention but it was probably always going to...

A single and album in one go...

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The last album I reviewed had a crackin' drum intro to get my attention. This lot not only have a cool drum beat but a nifty wee "NME" style guitar riff too. However Danava didn't lose my interest straight away. Les Savy Fav do. The nifty riff becomes an irritant almost as quickly as it became nifty. Perhaps due to the bland vocals that came over it. If the vocals didn't kill the song then a god awful guitar solo did. The god awful guitar solo stopped soon enough for more bland vocals. They stopped soon enough tho'. For a crap guitar solo. I don't really know what's going on here on "Patty Lee". A bunch of tossers trying to cram as many crap indie influences as they can into one track like a drunk rugby player trying to fit marbles up his arse for a dare on the team's Christmas night out. Now I need to listen to this song all over again. The radio edit wasn't enough so I get to sit through the album version. Maybe I was harsh at first. It's fairly catchy after a...

Sharp Kinks fuelled punky pop

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This review was origonally supposed to be centred on Madding Crowd's free download of Celebration, a track from this album but due to my offline status for a couple of weeks I thought, fuck it, just do the record. The Madding Crowd could be popped in with brash wiry indie bands like Milbun but The Madding Crowd have more on offer than the usual jack the lad bilge. They do have a pretty distinctive singer who vocalises in the current trend of brash Englishmen larking about but the music touches enough bases to make the material a cut above. A lot of the songs bounce with pep, like mid period Blur stripped of the cockiness, tunes such as Modern Man and the rapid Take A Walk all share the same kind of vigour as Chemical World for instance. The said download Celebration is a great little number, fusing angry electric Kinks with the mad sax of RFTC in a rocking yet refined manner. Refined is also the lovely Simple which closes the record, a rather plain and sedate acoustic...