Fuzzy, pompous, raunchy to the point of being overbearing and a dead ringer for a punk band covering the theme music to a Gidget movie: Yup, three more of Jon Spencer’s disciples have been allowed to make an album. So, in other…

Cheerfully sweet pop only identifiable as being off-the-beaten-path by the rough-hewn production quality and sometimes obscure subject matter of the lyrics, this is a sometimes intolerably fashionable musical trinket that rescues itself from avant-garde lameness by having the only thing you really…

I fucking swear I’m going to pull a Tsar Nicholas II on these indie/lo-fi/folk motherfuckers soon. I know exactly how I’m going to do it, too: I’ll advertise an album giveaway of rarities by Neil Young, Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen and The…

“Not too much stress…simple rhythms, nice melodies…just makes me feel good, you know what I’m sayin’?”…or so quoth an anonymous gentleman in a sample in the closing moments of the third track, and he’s pretty much right on the money. But while…

Despite its tendency to veer towards insipid clichés and some very dumb lyrics, Jet Black Joe’s return to the studio is tight, powerful and inspirationally short, relying mostly on straightforward rock melodies and brisk performances rather than succumbing to the complacent narcissism…

Hvar Í Hvergilandi has a split personality. It is at times a focused, soaring and lyrically perceptive piece of apocalyptic rock blessed with the ability to veer from finely-crafted fanciness to scathing, angst-ridden forthrightness in no time flat, while at other times…

With members sporting names as pretentious as Neil Diamonds and J’aime Tambour, one would have expected something a little more gripping from Islands, but they seem to be content to rely on their reputations as former members of Indie ‘greats’ The Unicorns…

What a terrible name for an album. Oh well, at least it’s more interesting than the music on it. Bland, indecisive acoustic lo-fi folk sludge riddled with half-hearted sappiness, it drifts through its forty-odd minutes with the enthusiasm of a kidney-stone sufferer…

Sólstafir present a somewhat outdated vision of metal with this, their first full-length album, with dissatisfyingly shallow sounds and chords, but still manage to convey their chosen imagery of frozen Northern wastes populated only by the souls of the damned fairly well.…

Wordless progressive noise mixed with a surprisingly warm pallet of emotions and laced with intricate, mesmerising and often stunningly beautiful guitar work, Fallegt Þorp is a true gem, the type of EP that leaves you wishing for a full-length release. The oddly…

Mugison’s sonic companion to Baltasar Kormákur’s most recent attempt at filmmaking is rather like Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club: Moody, tormented, dirty, unpredictable and while occasionally so pretentiously quirky that it makes one groan in exasperation, intriguing, inviting and altogether…

The singular, sharp and stunningly explicit and concentrated voice of Katrína Mogensen drives Mammút’s debut so that at first, were it not for the patient, buzzing unpredictability of the bass, it could be mistaken for a solo project. But, upon further listening,…

“How abstract can we get”….indeed. While a criminal who confesses is no less guilty, it does make one more inclined to be easy on him. Saying that In Cod We Trust is avant-garde would be an understatement bordering on the comically ludicrous,…

Wait long enough, and things come around. Once known only as Pavement’s side project, Silver Jews are now garnering media attention for Tanglewood Numbers and the first-ever tour for the band supporting the album. Tanglewood is a very good album, but some…