whatisthewhat has written the following articles:
A sparse, modern troubadour update on Ry Cooder’s heatwave-shimmer soundtrack to Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas.»
Roby is roaming the Irish countryside, so Jazz Monroe has stepped in to do(!) this week's singles...
So then, this week’s is a column of maternal murder, hyper-specialist musical terminology (“staccato”!) and waaay too many exclamation marks.»
Well done, James Blake. You honestly aren’t that bad at all, mate.»
Darren Hayman is regardless a master of simultaneously writing powerfully and underwhelmingly.»
Around the release of Jeffrey Lewis' third record City and Eastern Songs - an album which, it would quickly become clear, was the high watermark of the burgeoning (hey, let’s just call it) ‘anti-folk’ genre - you might remember DiS running this feature, w»
Remember that time you stood slightly aghast in the streets of a major European city, watching a man with a wrong hat and probably no home doing a Lotus Flower-dance to a vast cacophony of apparently-no-music-whatsoever? This is probably what he was listening to, it just didn’t exist yet.»
The kind of enchanting, quietly literate indie rock record you could build an intricately compelling life story from.»
This promising debut is a thing of such utter and ruddy brilliance it feels at once irresponsible to get carried away with praise and uppity to proffer anything so improbable as a perceived shortcoming.»
While there are hoards of similar, inferior folk rock records polluting highways and saloons worldwide, Luke Temple is better than the folksy ankle-biters because he updates and outweighs the wrung-out subject matter in both nous and nuance.»
The most beautiful and beautifully disjointed album of the year.»
We're jolly excited to see what colours this cerebral chameleon bursts into next.»
For all its wrong-footing attempts to reinvent and hide inside itself, The Entire City - while slippery as a fish out of water, by all accounts - is crystal clear of ambition and concept.»
Bring on their 'Don't You (Forget About Me)'? Don't even joke.»
While Plant Plants presently lack a distinctly unique voice, there’s a precocious promise at the heart of this.»
For this third EP, the remarkably nifty pianist masterfully acts out well-put together pop songs with enough depth to drown a clutch of former Sugababes.»
Perhaps the most unexpectedly ‘normal’ album of the year.»
Insightful literary extravagance and melodrama at a time when taking pride in ignorance and indifference seems to be the cultural norm.»
As pop MCs go, we’ve scarcely had it better.»
Born With Stripes is a springy, psych-rocking compendium of dust-coated Sixties radio highway hits, booming out a convertible Chevy as it cruises across the AZ/CA border.»
The work of a band more than content to make a good album - a really, very, very good album, yes - but only because they can’t be bothered to make a great one.»
Native Speaker is the kind of record to which you’d be tempted to ascribe the term ‘more than the sum of its parts’, if its parts weren’t so sodding gorgeous on their own merits.»
Ornaments From the Silver Arcade is a solid ‘indie’ record, with nuance and character spewing out of its cuff links.»
While The Phantom Forest flirts with the old cliché of trying to appease fanbase and critics simultaneously, Bearsuit remain in spirit the frolicsome DIY hedonists that John Peel and the rest of us made flags out of our collective cardigans over. »
It’s fair to say Smoke Ring...’s reliance on gloom and loneliness rarely lets up. But he’s trying to find beauty in it, which I guess is the point.»
In places Fluorescence is fairly triumphant - exhilarating even; on paper, it tickles all the right neurons. The payoff, though, falls short of expectations.»
Each submersion is every bit as worthy as the last.»
Do we really need Another Sub-Replacements Indie Schmuck to half-heartedly pump our fists to at commercial music festivals, and shout over at shit-hole nightclubs, and stick posters of on our already brimming bedroom walls? Of course we fucking do and you know, we always will. »
Rolling Blackouts is patently The Go! Team's most satisfying, accessible record to date. »
...Love You can at times be so unbearably irritating that it precludes sensible analysis. »
Jim Noir is another wondrous celebrator of youth's delightful naivety.»
