Aurora Gory Alice by Letters To Cleo

Letters To Cleo are brilliant and this is my favourite album they did. Let's take a quick look at how I found them - and how long I had to pause the tape to see their name in the credits!

A Christmas Record (Ze Records)

Ze Records was one of the hippest labels of the time. This was their attempt at a Christmas album. It's...something.

The Kim Gordon Fan Club

Kim Gordon is an idol of mine. Read on to find out why.

Social Dancing by Bis

Trends change, fashions leap around, forever leaving millions of reviewers and bloggers to catch them. Sometimes, however, it isn't up to us to catch these trends, but to catch up with them. In the case of Bis, a band whose magpie musical styles made them impossible to categorise outside of 'pop' (a whole universe in…

College rock: a confession

Really, I should have been in a college rock band. The problem was that I came from the wrong country, turned teen in the wrong decade, and my college was a stout tower block rather than a bustling campus with a radio station where all the best songs could be found left of the dial.…

Resolver by Veruca Salt

The very nature of a break-up album is that of catharsis, that journey the artist takes you on from the first note to the last second with the whole gamut of emotions in-between. The music becomes your guide through some intense feelings. Some of the greatest, most critically acclaimed albums ever recorded have been inspired…

Tinderbox by Siouxsie And The Banshees

I always knew where to find new music. Sometimes, that new music came from old bands long since gone. As a teenager in search of a perspective grander than what I saw outside the window of a council house in Cumbernauld, I'd find myself turning to music and books to give me something that wasn't…

Your New Favourite Band by The Hives

Some bands are too fun to be denied. Fundamentally, for me, there's something really exciting about a cool-as-fuck garage rock band. Their music is a loud racket, the sound of my emotions. These bands look cool with their music playing, just as cool when they stand for photographs. The Donnas. The Cramps. The Kills. Black…

Vibrate You by King Adora

King Adora arrived before quickly vanishing completely, a standout cameo in a really shit film. Though they're gone, Vibrate You is still here, always somewhere close to me. Hands up if you form emotional connections with albums? 2001 was a strange time which demanded strange music made by odd people. I knew I wanted to…

The Path to Happiness

Most writers arrive fully-formed, their debut novel hailed as something special and original. That or they're just ignored and left to fend for themselves. The word ‘debut’ carries a special cache around the publishing industry. I started off performing live shows, writing my own stories, hoping to be published one day. Twilight was a huge…