XTC’s English Settlement at 40

This year marks the 40th anniversary of XTC’s fifth album, English Settlement, a record that represents the inflection point in the band’s career between the frantic, high-energy post-punk they made their name with to the more orchestrated, pastoral sounds that defined the remainder of their active years. It also marked the final record that the […]

The Making of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy

The Jesus and Mary Chain released their landmark debut album Psychocandy way back in November 1985, which means despite putting together a remarkable career and releasing a number of good to great records, Jim and William Reid have been talking about Psychocandy for over 35 years. I went down this particular rabbit hole after seeing […]

Synthesizing Men I Trust

I guess there’s just something about Men I Trust’s smooth, synthetic sounds that makes you want to close your eyes, drift away, and then obsessively reverse-engineer their creative process. How else to explain why there’s not one but two pieces online deconstructing their songs down to the synthesizer settings. Not that I’m complaining – I […]

Ride’s Nowhere on #TimsTwitterListeningParty

The 30th anniversary of Ride’s debut Nowhere was technically last October, but Autumn 2020 was hardly a time where anyone anywhere felt like celebrating anything. It’s debatable how good things are a year on, but they’re definitely better, so if they want to treat the record’s 31st birthday as a do-over for the 30th, that’s […]