A coin in a jukebox, a basement that smells of piss and rust, full of vinyl at ten pence a time, a tape in a cheap cardboard sleeve, bought in a train station, a green courier bag holed where the corners of 12″s poked through, a radio aerial, q[…]

What was that phrase? Grace under pressure? No pressure here any more, twenty years into the game and playing in front of an audience that’s more like a congregation, but Robert Forster and Grant McLennan are still gracious enough and more so. […]

If he had been born in any pop era, Brian Wilson would’ve flourished at least to some degree with those mad skills of his. He wrote and co-wrote cunning songs about surfing, hotrods and teenage autonomy without any firsthand experience; doubtle[…]

The mode of the music changes, the city quakes, or at least those blocks of primer-than-thou office space quake that house the HQs of worldwide record companies. The reason, apparently, is MP3 technology, which you all know about and most of you use,[…]

The shutdown of the Chain Reaction label leaves its various artists to fend for themselves, without the cover of CR’s austere aesthetic: skeletonised house, ultra-repetetive processed dub, and of course the literal cover of those lovely but irr[…]

It’s half-past nine on a weekday night in central London and I’m watching a band in a bar. The sign on the door might say “Blues Bar” but apart from the odd introductory lick there’s little here Son House or even Eric Cl[…]

Velvet Goldmine and the Erotics of Pop
So here’s what I liked about Velvet Goldmine: there’s a moment when teenaged glam fan Arthur gets home after buying the new ‘Brian Slade’ record. He puts the record on the player and then[…]

Various Artists – That’s What I Call Sweet Music
For thirty-odd years now, underground comics legend R.Crumb has been preaching musical theory to a decidedly sceptical audience. Crumb was always faintly anachronistic in the hippie comix s[…]

Jim O’Rourke – Eureka 
A record I’ve been looking forward to impatiently is Jim O’Rourke’s Eureka. Much-tagged as O’Rourke’s grand pop move, this one – after 17’s magically pretty/peaceful Bad Ti[…]

Confessions Of A Pop Fan
This isn’t a manifesto, it’s just a vague statement of intent, or maybe belief. Heaven knows it’s difficult, even absurd, to try and crystallise what I feel about music and music criticism, and even more dif[…]