The English psychedelic tradition I love isn’t the overdone bastardisation of the 70s, it’s the more simple, clear and expressive sound of the late 60s. Not really Nick Drake (something less deeply personal than his work), and certainly n[…]

Click click click click click: Momus talks photos, videos, visuals. Nothing to do with music, by the way.[…]

Give the music press a Liverpudlian inch and they’ll take a bloody liberty. The installation of Lee Mavers as some kind of lost pop genius based on one song speaks volumes for Brit-crit’s sentimentality. Our manufacturing industry’s[…]

1) Buy a 12-string guitar. Record yourself playing open fifths in various keys for 25 minutes. This is the foundation of your song.
2) Call up the bloke who married your sister. Get him to come over to your studio and put a bass guitar in his hands. […]

Now, truth be told, I have no psychic powers. I do not strictly know what song you are listening to on the radio right now, or if indeed you are listening to the radio at all. But if you are, I think we can all agree that not only is it derivative, b[…]

(inspired by Duel!)
Of course the Divine Comedy is worse than REM. And let’s be clear about it, I loathe REM from the depths of my innermost being. And not just for the exceptions (“Shiny Happy People”, “Everybody Hurts”[…]

A 3-disc gimmick record which its vain creator admits was designed to attract music writers? It sounds simply ghastly, my dears. Mind you, credit where it’s due: the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs has certainly done its job: all the pop p[…]

I may be encouraged to give a fuller disection of THE most appalling, derivative genre of dance music at a later time. Meanwhile – give it a rest fellas, and while you’re at it you can put vendors of foul coloured fluoro-beach-wear New Lo[…]

Invisible man: “It’d be as if Bret Easton Ellis wrote the murderous “American Psycho” and no critic questioned his judgment or the book’s content — and those who did pause briefly to consider the book’s moral[…]

DUEL!: REM and the Divine Comedy are the gladiators. You are the Emperor’s thumb.[…]