feather16

The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death is an album from a band that showed no signs of slowing down and instead attempted to evolve their sound. Christianity is the main theme here – our dear friend Marx takes a back seat. However, Heaton’s ear for a catchy hook and his lack of refrainment from delivering leftist jabs in typical sardonic fashion remain true, and even trumpets take centre stage at times!

If Happy Hour set the tone for London 0-4 Hull with its light jangle-pop ... read more

The Smiths, though instead of, “I’m in my bedroom, I want to die.” it’s, “Marx is wonderful! Marx is great!”

To be fair, I don’t fully agree with the Smiths comparisons. Sure, both are labelled as ‘jangle pop’ groups, but that’s about as far as it goes. Lyrically, they couldn’t be more far removed from each other. The Smiths were nihilistic whereas the Housemartins, optimistic. Musically, The Smiths had a typical band layout; ... read more

I remember watching Pointless one evening and the question of the day was R.E.M. album titles. The contestants dug deep into their pockets and eventually blurted Out Of Time, Automatic For The People and a random guess which escapes me as their three answers. Unfortunately, none of those answers landed them with the jackpot. “There are actually quite a few pointless answers here,” Richard Osman informed us as he went through the bulk of their catalogue, listing each one: Monster, ... read more

I’m admittedly not the biggest Bowie fan. Ziggy Stardust, Station to Station, Low, Blackstar (aside a few tracks) don’t really do much for me. Perhaps I should give those albums another chance at some point, but there’s so many other artists I’d rather listen to. Anyway, Young Americans is my favourite album of his and in my opinion, it’s the album where Bowie’s vocal talents shine the brightest.

Sure, the album is a bit meandering, mixing deep soul tracks ... read more