Cate Le Bon, “Puts Me To Work” get it on Cyrk That xtiandc is one unpredictable cat, most notably in that he’s a human and not a cat as the previous part of the sentence might lead you to believe. He’s climbed oceans and swum mountains and currently makes a living at the SW waterfront, [...]

Mull Historical Society, “Animal Cannabus” get it on Loss (2001) The real curse of being old is knowing that you’re destined to be old-fashioned. As the idiot Abe Simpson once said, “I used to be with it. Then they changed what it was. Now what’s it seems scary and weird to me.” Not exactly the [...]

I wasn’t much into Saint Etienne before about 1998. I hadn’t yet developed a taste for treacly pop or learned how to forgive bluntly shallow lyrics, and the songs I’d heard of theirs like “He’s On The Phone” were more pop than I could take at the time. I can’t remember why I gave their [...]

Los Campesinos!, “By Your Hand” find it on Hello Sadness (2011) It’s a stressful time for us music obsessives. The end of the year means a sudden panic of trying to catch up with the music of the last year before the next year’s new releases start flowing in. And while most of what I’ve [...]

AlunaGeorge, “You Know You Like It” find it on You Know You Like It (2011) Okay. Now this is more like it. Dubstep with a purpose, neosoul that’s really just neo, and top-shelf, quality pop without the unnecessary sugar. There’s at least four solid hooks in here, and while the vocals verge dangerously close to [...]

With a simple doorbell begins the album From A to B  by New Musik. Something so familiar but incredibly listenable, danceable, singalong-able. Why haven’t I heard this before? The glorious-but-lamentable discovery of something that existed all this time: a secret, just waiting to be found. Something that could make you so happy, something that could quite [...]

Stevie Jackson, “Just, Just So To The Point” get it on (I Can’t Get No) Stevie Jackson (2011) Pity poor Stevie Jackson. Sure he lives the life of a globe-trotting rock star, but he’s always been in the shadow of Belle & Sebastian’s primary songwriter Stuart Murdoch, one of the best and most beloved songwriters [...]

Florence + The Machine, “Shake it Out” get it on Ceremonials Every now and then, a band comes along that makes you use the phrase “every now and then, a band comes along”. Florence + the Machine (does anyone know the sum of that equation? I’m bad at math) is one of those bands, but [...]

The Go! Team, “Buy Nothing Day (feat. Bethany Cosentino)” find it on Rolling Blackouts I slept really hard on this new Go! Team record. It was put out in January, but I just never bothered picking it up for some reason. Okay, so Proof of Youth didn’t really do much for me, but Thunder, Lightning, Strike [...]

Slow Club, “Two Cousins” (2011) get it on Paradise “Two Cousins” has been floating around me for a couple of months now, coming up on shuffle and lumped in with the rest of the album, but it’s only been recently that it’s seriously stuck in my head, and I find myself constantly wanting to hear [...]