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Music Reviews / Previews

CD Review: Juliette And The Licks, Four On The Floor

by Stuart Heritage

Forget the constant threat of World War III or imminent environmental collapse – you know that the planet is screwed when the band of the 33-year-old girl from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape makes an album that rocks harder than a swarm of burly bikers at a wrestling match.

Four On The Floor is that album, and Juliette And The Licks is that band. Yes, Juliette as in Juliette Lewis from Cape Fear and Natural Born Killers. And, just to add to the demented brilliance of Four On The Floor by Juliette And The Licks, it looks like Juliette Lewis has taken up rocking out while dressed up like a red indian now.

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hecklergigs: Goldenhorse, Water Rats, 19/09/06

by Stuart Heritage

There’s a decent sized crowd filling Water Rats tonight, and a relaxed buzz of anticipation. We’re here purely to see one of our favourite New Zealand bands, Goldenhorse, who have just finished touring all over Germany, and are here to play their second and final London gig this year.

It was great to see them again after so long, last time we caught them was just over a year ago at London’s Toast festival, where the combination of hot sunshine and wine being sold by the bottle had resulted in the rare sight of a Goldenhorse mosh pit. For those unacquainted with the gorgeous, well crafted pop rock gems of this band, let this be your introduction.

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CD Review: Sound Team, Movie Monster

by Stuart Heritage

It’s a surprising rare thing for hecklerspray to be pleasantly surprised by an album; they usually confirm exactly what we expected from them or disappoint us hideously – we were once sent a thrash metal album containing a song called Ignominious Slaughter that we mercifully decided not to inflict on you.

So when Movie Monster by Sound Team dropped our laps, we couldn’t figure it out at first. A band we’d never heard of with an almost deliberately vague name bringing out an album with a completely inscrutable sleeve – Movie Monster by Sound Team didn’t exactly fill us with hope. Then, about two and half seconds after slipping the CD into our hi-fi, the strange sensation of actually being impressed by something came over us. And it grew. And it grew. Now we’re under the impression that Movie Monster by Sound Team is a monumental, catchy, textured album that deserves to be heard by absolutely everyone.

It's a surprising rare thing for hecklerspray to be pleasantly surprised by an album; they usually confirm exactly what we expected from them or disappoint us hideously - we were once sent a thrash metal album containing a song called Ignominious Slaughter that we mercifully decided not to inflict on you. So when Movie Monster by Sound Team dropped our laps, we couldn't figure it out at first. A band we'd never heard of with an almost deliberately vague name bringing out an album with a completely inscrutable sleeve - Movie Monster by Sound Team didn't exactly fill us with hope. Then, about two and half seconds after slipping the CD into our hi-fi, the strange sensation of actually being impressed by something came over us. And it grew. And it grew. Now we're under the impression that Movie Monster by Sound Team is a monumental, catchy, textured album that deserves to be heard by absolutely everyone.
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CD Review: Say Anything, …Is A Real Boy

by Stuart Heritage

The world is drowning in vaguely skatey-sounding pop-punk bands who all seem to think that having one of their songs on the menu screen to EA NFL Street 32 is a high career watermark.

Superficially, Say Anything are one of these bands, since they tick all the requisite boxes; thrashy guitar numbers containing somewhat rebellious lyrics sung with a strong, almost cartoonish American accent. However, let Say Anything …Is A Real Boy into your life and you won’t be able to help finding its twitchy, eccentric, subversive, restless music just a teeny bit endearing.

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CD Review: Goose, Bring It On

by Stuart Heritage

Put yourself in the place of Skint Records. The music that people identify you with is now deeply unfashionable and your biggest signing Fatboy Slim hasn’t made a decent record in years. What do you do?

Simple, you head to Belgium and sign a band that’s named after a bird that honks. That’s the only logical reason why Skint signed Goose and is releasing the new Goose album Bring It On. And it’s good job it did, too, because Bring It On by Goose is a dirty great hunk of filthy electro sleazerock that we didn’t even think Belgians were capable of.

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CD Review: The Bronx, The Bronx

by Stuart Heritage

OK, lets get the facts out of the way first; The Bronx recorded their album The Bronx in a coverted methadone clinic into a microphone that Hitler once used, and they have song titles like Shitty Future, Transsexual Blackout and Rape Zombie.

Still with us? Bloody hell, you’re doing well. Consider that first paragraph a test, because once you’ve waded through The Bronx’s – let’s face it – pretty tedious attempts at being different and scary, you’ll be presented with an album of pure stripped-down energy that you’d be a fool to ignore.

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CD Review – Viva Voce, Get Yr Blood Sucked Out

by Stuart Heritage

An often overlooked aspect of music is choosing how many people you want in your band. Some people settle for three or four, while fools like The Polyphonic Spree and Blazin Squad feel you need at least 150.

Viva Voce, though, don’t have time to worry about crap like numbers because Viva Voce – just two of them, by the way; Anita Robinson and her husband Kevin – are busy making fuzzy poppy catchy dense freak-out psych indie masterpieces like new album Get Yr Blood Sucked Out that, if you haven’t already guessed, we can’t get enough of.

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CD Review: Motorhead, Kiss Of Death

by Stuart Heritage

Motorhead, then. If there was ever a band capable of taking on the Rolling Stones in terms of hanging in there, throwing out album after album, touring relentlessly and steadfastly refusing to die, it’s Motorhead.

And guess what? Motorhead have a new album out – Kiss Of Death. And what does Kiss Of Death by Motorhead sound like? It sounds like Motorhead you idiot, what were you expecting, Keane? And since Kiss Of Death by Motorhead sounds like Motorhead, it rocks approximately 10,000 times harder and is a million times more fantastic than anything else your puny human brain can comprehend.

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CD Review: The Sunshine Underground, Raise The Alarm

by Stuart Heritage

These days you can’t move for spikily angular bands with asymmetrical haircuts and skinny suits, can you? It’s bloody annoying – we literally tripped over the bassist from the Automatic on the way to buy some milk this morning.

And, to be honest, most of these bands are so tediously identical that half of their mothers couldn’t pick them out of a copy of the NME. What we need is a band who manages to nail the basics – spiky guitars, danceability, yelped vocals – and then write an album full of tunes bigger than a fleet of jumbo jets. Surely they’d instantly make every other opportunist indie band around completely redundant, wouldn’t they? Well, The Sunshine Underground is that band, Raise The Alarm is that album and Fearne Cotton’s due to start sniffing round them for boyfriend material any second now.

These days you can't move for spikily angular bands with asymmetrical haircuts and skinny suits, can you? It's bloody annoying - we literally tripped over the bassist from the Automatic on the way to buy some milk this morning. And, to be honest, most of these bands are so tediously identical that half of their mothers couldn't pick them out of a copy of the NME. What we need is a band who manages to nail the basics - spiky guitars, danceability, yelped vocals - and then write an album full of tunes bigger than a fleet of jumbo jets. Surely they'd instantly make every other opportunist indie band around completely redundant, wouldn't they? Well, The Sunshine Underground is that band, Raise The Alarm is that album and Fearne Cotton's due to start sniffing round them for boyfriend material any second now.
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hecklergigs: Radiohead, Edinburgh Meadowbank Stadium 22/8/06

by Matthew Laidlow

Radiohead. Say this band’s name to anyone who has a mild interest in music and you’re more then likely to spark off some kind of argument. Over the fifteen years that Radiohead have been going, we’ve been subjected to all sorts of different sounds.

In the beginning Radiohead did nothing to really capture anybody’s imagination, with their only real dint in the music being Creep. You know Creep. It’s the one where he says “fuck” a few times. Soon came The Bends, Radiohead’s second album and the one that started to grab us by the balls. Combining clever music videos with pleasant songs gave Radiohead the praise they deserved. But when OK Computer came along, Radiohead were propelled in to the limelight and the world took notice of them and their wonk-eyed Thom Yorke. They had it all in that album, each song regarded as a masterpiece and the album as a whole is thought of by critics as one of the best albums in the world. Ever. But after that, things kind of went downhill.

Radiohead. Say this band's name to anyone who has a mild interest in music and you’re more then likely to spark off some kind of argument. Over the fifteen years that Radiohead have been going, we’ve been subjected to all sorts of different sounds. In the beginning Radiohead did nothing to really capture anybody’s imagination, with their only real dint in the music being Creep. You know Creep. It’s the one where he says "fuck" a few times. Soon came The Bends, Radiohead’s second album and the one that started to grab us by the balls. Combining clever music videos with pleasant songs gave Radiohead the praise they deserved. But when OK Computer came along, Radiohead were propelled in to the limelight and the world took notice of them and their wonk-eyed Thom Yorke. They had it all in that album, each song regarded as a masterpiece and the album as a whole is thought of by critics as one of the best albums in the world. Ever. But after that, things kind of went downhill.
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