Blogcritics Author: Andy Peterson

Music Review: Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children

Andy Peterson — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 09:26:51 EST

Electronica's eureka moment: probably the only classic album not reissued in 2008.
By the early 1990’s we had become familiar with the paradoxical idea of dance music that you couldn’t dance to. As rave ground to a nihilistic halt, the Warp label’s seminal Artificial Intelligence series precised a change of direction, it's roots deep in the eloquence/elegance of the first wave techno that had been originally...

Music Review: The Killers - Sam's Town

Andy Peterson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:03:35 EST

Revisiting The Killers' sophomore record on the eve of their next album's release.
Even though the protagonists were from Vegas, not Vauxhall, Hot Fuss was undeniably a reverent indexing of the best of late-twentieth-century British pop music from Oasis to Duran Duran via Queen, New Order and Soft Cell. Such unfettered nostalgia struck a chord with a global audience and from the carefully-honed press hysteria that accompanied...

Music Review: New Order - Technique

Andy Peterson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:34:36 EST

Now reissued, the Mancunians' acid house inspired tour de force is no antique
Of all of the Salford foursomes' albums between Movement and Republic, Technique seems to be regarded by certain critics, and even some of their most rabid fans, with a degree of rare noncommittal apathy. Dismissed at the time as the “Ibiza” album, the widely held perception on it's release was that it embodied the pitfalls of...

The Smiths Meat Is Murder vs The Queen Is Dead

Andy Peterson — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:27:35 EDT

As yet another reissue looms, remember their greatest..
The general belief is that Meat is Murder’s successor, The Queen is Dead was the magnum opus of Morrissey and Marr’s creative kernel: this is wrong. The latter contains all the hallmarks of the duo’s gargantuan creative impetus, displaying a mordantly romantic sense of pathos whilst possessing the darkly humorous lyrical...

Music Review: Autechre - Incunabula

Andy Peterson — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:35:16 EDT

Put those Indian Ocean Moods CD's in the trash.. this is the real thing.
Still cited as the alma mater for modern electronica, the Artificial Intelligence series was the Warp label's kiss off to the landscape it had helped shape. Although it did little for its creators bank accounts - it was hardly likely by definition to catapult the artists responsible into the charts as had happened to a number of their faddish acid...

Music Review: Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul

Andy Peterson — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:32:50 EDT

Brit Pop's children are now the daddies...
Oasis occupy probably one of the strangest spaces in British rock's glitterati. They sell out vast arena tours in minutes, recently celebrated a lifetime achievement award bestowed by the otherwise psychotically youth revering New Musical Express, and any release is unquestionably a music industry EVENT. And yet. Whatever the build up to the...

Music Review: The Gun Club - Fire of Love

Andy Peterson — Tue, 7 Oct 2008 22:52:45 EDT

Seminal punk-garage which Jack White clearly has on repeat...
Recorded in New Orleans in just six speed fuelled days (allegedly for less than $2,000), The Gun Club’s unsettling, inspirational debut supposedly had Jack White fixated by its gut wrenching howl. Driven/Sermonized by quixotic frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Fire of Love is a bite from the shit sandwich of his visceral world, in which the lines...

Music Review: Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke

Andy Peterson — Sat, 4 Oct 2008 11:44:52 EDT

Kiwi Jekyll and Hyde delivers peerless eighties rock; Katy Perry stop reading here.
What is it about the eighties that we find so appealing? On the face, there’s little to venerate. Popular transatlantic culture stood in thrall to the bitter tang of Thatcher-Reagan consumerism; rarely has there been such a gap between the reality of everyday living and the counterfeit glamour of existence as painted by popular media....

Music Review: Glasvegas - Glasvegas

Andy Peterson — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:47:14 EDT

From the meanest streets, an epic noise.
A haven for Irish refugees escaping from the potato famine of the 1840s, Glasgow's East End is the kind of area which for most people exists only on a map. Blighted by social deprivation and unaffected by the gentrification which has raised living standards elsewhere, like many other areas across Scotland's first city it's also home to...

Music Review: Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires

Andy Peterson — Tue, 9 Sep 2008 07:29:22 EDT

Indie loses it's luddite identity and heads for the floor.
On the surface of it, the town of St. Albans, lying 20-ish miles north of London, looks to be the epitome of British urbanity. Named Verulamium by the Romans, according to Wikipedia, it's most famous resident in the last two millenia was sixteenth century philosopher and do-it-yourself renaissance man Francis Bacon.One man's suburban bliss...