ROCK/Review Sean MacLeod – Light Up the Sun

The opening of this song is pretty nice. The acoustic guitar is soft, calm, unhurried, it slowly draws you in before the full sound begins to open up. When it goes right, that’s a slow build that can feel really satisfying. Here, I think it really does. When it all falls into place, you’re in it. The jangly guitars and […]

ROCK/Review Roman Ceglov – Fight

There are some songs which sound like they were ripped from a moment and never tidied up after. Fight is just that. It is raw and spontaneous, and it’s something you can’t fake. Right from the opening riff it pulls you in, and the tension doesn’t let up throughout. This is why it’s so interesting. The guitars are fuzz-heavy and […]

ROCK/Review OpCritical – Doing Fine

When a song has a clear message and delivers it with this much enthusiasm, it’s just so satisfying. From the opening riff, Doing Fine has you by the short hairs and doesn’t drop you. It’s raw and immediate like the best punk and grunge songs are and it embraces that influence.There’s an honesty in the performance that makes every lyric […]

ROCK/Review SARK – Flying Toward Tomorrow

This track gets to you in a subtle way. It doesn’t shout or impress you immediately. It begins with a piano, simple, reverb-laden, and simply sits with you for a moment. The opening alone is enough to set the tone for something that feels like a true film, and a bit sad in the best way. Then the guitar comes […]

FOLK ROCK/Review Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard – Travelin’ Heart

Some songs make you want to get in a car and just drive. Travelin’ Heart is definitely one of those. It opens slowly and quietly, and you enter into a particular headspace. A bit wistful, a bit relaxed, but very ready to go somewhere. The acoustic guitar and mandolin are the backbone of the song and really add to the […]

ROCK/Review Arn-Identified Flying Objects and Alien Friends – Bells of Silver

There are songs that feel like a warm hand on your shoulder. Bells of Silver by Arn-Identified Flying Objects and Alien Friends is one of those. It is soft, deliberate and quite easy to sit with. As if it draws you back to it on lazy nights, perhaps when you just want a feeling of honesty and human nature to […]

ROCK/Review VHS PANTY RIOT – Peel The Sun

It’s a thing about good synthwave, it’s like, I’m in a different place. Peel The Sun does that from first note. It immerses you into this cozy and somewhat disorienting universe, which seems like a movie you’ve already watched but forgot. It’s a feat seldom achieved. The production here is really amazing. Each layer is in the correct position. The […]

ROCK/Review The Plastic Pals – Decisions

There are songs out there that just have a swing to them that you can’t help but get into. Decisions is a track of that sort. It’s immediately apparent when you start the track that there’s the groove in you, and it never leaves. It’s a song that will make you feel good without you realizing it. The track pulls […]

ROCK/Review Nils Lassen – Under Your Spell

There are songs that have no description but are very easy to feel. Under Your Spell is just such a song. It slowly wraps itself around you and by the time you realise what’s going on you are already lost in it. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. This is a really satisfying instrumentation, breezy and layered. […]

Pop-Rock/Review Lana Karlay – For the Weak

Some songs simply make you want to turn up the volume. For the Weak is one of them. It comes in with a sense of urgency, a sense of restlessness, it’s alive, guitars crash in. No soft start here. It goes for it and that confidence is contagious. There’s something very immediate about the energy of the track. It doesn’t […]

ROCK/Review The Shrubs – Let Us In

There are some songs that take some time to show themselves. Let Us In by The Shrubs is one of these. It slowly fades in, like it’s sneaking up on you, and you’re all in before you know it. This gradual development is one of what makes it so effective. The drums established the mood from the get-go. This pulse […]

ROCK/Review Reetoxa – War Killer

Some songs are instant hits and I believe that War Killer does just that. From the beginning there is this kind of unrefined energy that is continually moving forward. It is loud and urgent, but not faux. There’s a reason for this. There are many songs that attempt to be meaningful, perhaps, but this one does feel like it’s from […]

ROCK/Review Filip Dahl – Flying High

It’s a beautiful piece of music, and Filip Dahl brings it back with a new instrumental, Flying High. Aside from the guitar playing, there are no vocals in here and that’s exactly what the song needs. Already on the first few notes you can hear there’s someone who understands how to let the guitar sing on its own and not […]

Pop-Rock/Review Sean MacLeod – I Know Not

I Know Not by Sean MacLeod is on the borderline of commercial pop forms and experimental sound decisions, which creates a unified whole and makes his own musical language. The chorus makes clear 1950s doo-wop allusions, and the aspects of the wall of sound approach of Phil Spector are present. Its melody is conspicuous and well developed in the structure […]

ROCK/Review Stainvarp – Complete

Stainvarp have brought it with something that really matters with the complete. The new offering of the Swedish outfit does not conceal its subject–this is parental love in the distorted guitars and the high-flying tones, and it has the full value of its emotional load. The song begins with a lyrical closeness. Plucked guitar and voice, exposed and mesmeric. Then […]

ROCK/Review The Spitting Pips – Vicious Circles

The Spitting Pips have something maniacally decadent about their “Vicious Circles”–a song that does not merely recount disorder, but literally flings you down into its intense, swirling core. The Llandudno quintet have created something truly visceral, the type of rock that makes you feel a bit dizzy and uncertain of what exactly has happened. The opening screeches of the wah […]

ROCK/Review Sean MacLeod – Beautiful Star

It has something romantically old-fashioned about Beautiful Star–it seems almost like finding a gem that has been buried in another century but it sounds so very up to date. The former Cisco frontman, Sean T MacLeod (who has worked with the producer of U2, Paul Barrett) has produced a track that lies squarely between the pop ambition and the rock […]

ROCK/Review Mercy Kelly – Out in The Night

Mercy Kelly of Greater Manchester have come back with one, called Out in The Night and it is at once obvious that this four-piece band does not have nothing against doing things in half. Since they played Kendal Calling and Tramlines Festivals, and otherwise, have racked up more than 400 radio plays, created on the grassroots strength, they have created […]

ROCK/Review Andy Smythe – Emergency

Andy Smythe, a songwriter from London , has produced something that is truly endearing in his song, Emergency, a song that seems to have been discovered by chance in the untold history of the British pop. As the first single of his upcoming album Quiet Revolution, this song is an easy way to cross eras, combining the melodic narration of […]

ROCK/Review Highroad No. 28 – Thistroubledsoul

It brings with it a kind of silence that falls upon the moment when Thistroubledsoul starts. It doesn’t hit all at once. It is time consuming, getting in slowly like some emotions when you have been holding on to them all along. Listening to Highroad No. 28 after almost ten years of silence on the part of the band was […]