Singles

Taffy are a Japanese band who have seemingly arrived in a time machine from the mid-90s, clutching a bunch of cassettes by bands which were probably never cool. They have taken the era of Britpop and shoegaze, a time which was improbably exciting but very fleeting, and dragged it into 2013. And for some unfathomable reason, it wo...

We all know Ai Weiwei is brave. The internationally famous and outspoken artist was detained for 81 days as part of crackdown by the Chinese government on campaigners and dissidents. But did you know he can sing?

Well, actually he can't really. But it doesn't matter. 'Dumbass', taken from his soon-to-be-rel...

6.5

Upon receiving Mike Tyler's latest record, it's immediately obvious that he's a man who knows the value of making a physical release that little bit special. The 7in single comes with some cleverly designed jigsaw artwork: a cover you can literally pull apart and put back together again. It's ultimately a little n...

The Birthday Kiss are one of a group of bands leading something of an indie-pop resurgence. Leeds alone boasts talent and tunes from the likes of This Many Boyfriends, Just Handshakes (We're British), The Wind-Up Birds and The Seven Inches (all of which I'd heartily recommend investigating). The Birthday Kiss are fronted ...

Albums

It's been nearly 15 years since Sigur Rós were launched on the consciousness of the world outside of their native Iceland with their extraordinary single 'Svefn-G-Englar' and second album Ágætis byrjun, which had journalists and listeners reaching for their thesauruses, with many settling on 'ethereal', 'glacial' and 'other-worldly', among other superlatives. Since then they have produced a seeming...

A lot of weird shit went down leading up to the release of Board of Canada's latest album. Between blank vinyls with hints to Tomorrow's Harvest's release date (one of which someone sold on eBay for four figures), and a listening party in the middle of the Californian Mojave desert (the location of which was hidden in a coded tweet from the band), it was quite a departure from their usual reclusive, publicity-shy persona.

The princes of electronica, brothers Mike S...

Buy Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest from Amazon

The cover of this album illustrates what Matt Bigland might have thought Dinosaur Pile-Up would end up doing on their second album. Flat on their faces they ain't though; instead, they are kicking and screaming. This album would actually be better suited to the title of their debut: Growing Pains.

Where the first album was full of slacker fun, Nature/Nurture has a slightly more direct and serious approach. Well, okay, not super-serious but serious enough for a ban...

Buy Dinosaur Pile Up - Nature/Nurture from Amazon

3.5

The hype machine swaggers into town from time to time and generally goes into overload when anything tagged with Liam 'gob-iron' Gallagher rolls into town. Let's face it, anything post Morning Glory has been a pile of shhhiiitttteeee. Once his feuding sibling Noel retired from the marching powder, the creative juices did the same and the output became dreary and dead-eyed.

Redundant of ideas and merely chasing the desire to be The Beatles tribute band, the siblings...

Laura Marling is a really big name nowadays. She isn't just someone trying to break onto the music scene, or just another artist to lump in with Mumford & Sons and the folk revival that British music seems to have descended into in the last few years, she's up there and deservedly so. Her latest and fourth album, Once I Was an Eagle, is majestic, beautifully crafted and has all the makings of being Marling's best work yet.

Not only is her voice gorgeously entra...