expect delay
Conventional wisdom holds that Slowdive’s second album Souvlaki is their masterpiece – certainly it’s my go-to of their catalog – but the critical re-evaluation Pygmalion – their once-but-no-longer swan song – has gotten over the past quarter-century is pretty remarkable. On its initial release in February of 1995, it seemed to be cursed. Drummer Simon […]
Now that My Bloody Valentine’s back catalog is for the most part officially back in print – the Domino-branded reissues of their last three albums came out last week (although my own order is still back-ordered till whenever) and their EPs 1988-1991 has finally made it to streaming services in its entirety, albeit retconned into […]
I haven’t done one of these posts for a Cure song yet because, well, The Cure are a big band and they have a lot of live material online and most of their classic songs have been covered many, many times. In other words – too much work. But I’m going to give it a […]
I’ve been winding my way through the recently-release World of Wong Kar Wai box set, and on re-watching Chungking Express, was reminded that I always meant to do a proper deep dive into the mid-90s relationship between Faye Wong and the Cocteau Twins, two artists who wouldn’t seem to have anything in common – one […]
If there was a way to measure musical influence per second of recording, Wire’s “Outdoor Miner” would surely be in the 99th percentile. The original version, which appeared on 1978’s Chairs Missing, clocked in at an efficient 1:44 but would be one of the most-loved tracks by the massively influential outfit. Now that quotient drops […]
It’s quite a thing for a single song to be given credit for creating not just a musical genre, but an entire subculture but these are things that are attributed to Bauhaus’ 1979 debut single, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, aka the song which begat goth. PopMatters ran a piece on the song’s importance and influence on […]
This probably ad-libbed birthday song from The Cure’s May 1980 show at Scala in Herford, West Germany was directed to bassist Simon Gallup on the eve of his 20th birthday, but we’ll turn it around today to wish Robert Smith a happy 62nd birthday today.
Which is more classic? This song, the first single from Roxy Music’s final album – 1982’s Avalon – or Bryan Ferry’s leather jacket tux look from the video. Honestly, it’s a coin toss but for our purposes let’s just say it comes up “song” and move on. This “performance” on German television programme Na sowas! […]
Sonic Cathedral turned the UK’s first COVID lockdown into content last year, soliciting quarantine listening selections from dreampop and shoegaze artists for their Isolationism series. Slowdive drummer Simon Scott chose the 1986 collaboration between The Moon and The Melodies between minimalist composer Harold Budd and Cocteau Twins, describing how its soothing blend of ambience and […]
It’s been an unofficial kind of My Bloody Valentine week, what with the band’s catalog returning to streaming services globally and coming back into print, albeit with some confusion around what versions are available in what form and where. Basically, you can’t buy the Domino versions of Isn’t Anything or Loveless – in other words, […]
