Articles
chilliard has written the following articles:
The Bluetones - Fast Boy / Liquid Lips
The frothing buzz of distorted guitars... not very Bluetones, surely? The Bluetones are the glorious middle-distance runners of Britpop. They’ve neither scaled the supermodel-shagging, ant-snorting heights of their stadium filling contemporaries, or been reduced to a seven night stand at the Frog & Firkin to pay»
Jools Holland - What Goes Around / Rock Me
Jools Holland... he was in Squeeze, he’s presented the few good music programmes on TV, he’s an all round good guy. If he wasn’t pursuing with vigour his love for ‘boogie-woogie’, this would be a man you’d want to be very good friends with. Unquestionably, he’s a terrific piano player, but whilst this all»
Imogen - Like The Girl's Name
Good god, this is loud... well for a Sunday evening anyway (when I’m writing this). Kicking off with a bowel-shaking unearthly squall, opening track ‘The Gallery’ then settles into a somewhat pedestrian tread of the fare that Hundred Reasons and Hell Is For Heroes ply. As musicians, Imogen<»
Badly Drawn Boy - All Possibilities
Damon Gough is one unlikely pop star. A stocky, bearded chap already in his thirties, he’s hardly the picture of a gleaming white teeth poster boy. Smash Hits centrefold spreads very probably don’t await, but their loss is our gain. Beneath that stripey woolly hat is a pocket pop genius. ‘Have You Fed The Fis»
Munkster - Help Me Breathe
Recalling the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ recent conversion to melody, Munkster possess an appalling moniker, which in no way reflects their music. Their songs are somewhat bereft of a jaw-dropping chorus or that little sprinkle of magic dust on the mixing desk that divides the songs that ruminate around your »
Harry - Under The Covers
There is something just ever so slightly disturbing about Harry. Call me a jaded old cynic, but the nasty whiff of corporate creation comes a-knocking every time I listen to this record. Is Harry to female empowerment what Avril Lavigne is to punk rock? The strumpet imagery could of course be part of h»
Erasure - Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
Subtlety, understatement... pah! Who needs them? Mine’s a campari & coconut. After a few years when they became surprisingly introspective and filed away the arse-less flares to the darker depths of their wardrobe, Erasure have recently returned with a covers collection of some of their favourite pop bits. <»
Delays - Nearer Than Heaven
There seemed to be a huge spoil of sweet jangly singles in the charts in the early nineties by bands that promised such treasures in three minutes only to slump into record company difficulties, heroin addiction, second album syndrome or worse. However, their bittersweet legacy only helps to reaffirm how wonderful some»
Miss Machine - All American Girl
‘All American Girl’ is the debut single of one Anna Mercedes and her band Miss Machine. Let's hope this is the last. Miss Machine’s sole tag seems to be that Strokes producer Gordon Raphael was slumped in the producer chair, quite possibly unconscious whilst this unearthly dirge wa»
Sam La More - Takin' Hold
The cultural hub of the antipodes - Sydney, Australia should be a city bubbling with pseudo-balearic rhythms. There’s sun, sea, sand and numerous other alliterations to carve into the backdrop. Sydneysider Sam Littlemore seems in little disagreement and had been swathing the city for the past six years from his studio.»
Coldplay - Clocks
If you haven’t heard ‘Clocks’ yet, you must be new to this planet... so greetings to Earth and all that. Coldplay have sold millions of records, all have showbiz girlfriends (well apart from the band members who aren’t Chris Martin, who erm... don’t talk much) and have jammed just about every auditorium i»
The D4 - Ladies Man
That AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’ was recently voted the nation’s most favoured tune should tell you much about the pop sensibilities of New Zealand. From a nation that has exported little since Split Enz, The D4 join their countrymen the Datsuns as newly-touted saviours of Kiwi rock. On the streng»
Ladytron - Blue Jeans
Those Liverpudlian pioneers of glacial pop, Ladytron. follow up their near-hit ‘Seventeen’ (the one with the Slavic schoolgirl video) with another ode to teen iconography. ‘Blue Jeans’ has a catchy chorus and breathy Francophone vocals which speak of sultry, wind-ki»
Dirty Vegas - Simple Things
Whilst I’m sure it should be the duty of all aspirant music critics to rip to shreds any grammy-hugging Britons who decide to plough their furrow over foreign turf, I won’t. Dirty Vegas are not the gatekeepers of some musical Hades for deciding to pocket a few greenbacks - they lack the sheer grunge-lite dull»
Stephen Jones - Almost Cured Of Sadness
That the Stephen Jones of 2003 is crafted of same flesh as the auteur of ‘You’re Gorgeous’ doesn’t seem right in some way - in the same way if Liam Gallagher in some parallel universe, after a short stint in Oasis, was now engaging in a career in modern jazz dance. Of course if one were to dig de»
Adam Snyder - Two Moons
From the heaving incestuous bosom of Americana, former Mercury Rev infantryman Adam Snyder released his debut long-player 'Across The Pond' last year on David Gray’s HTI label. Whilst vocalists of a similar artistic persuasion bare voices like a hellcat scraped down a blackboard (though wound round »