I upchucked in my mouth a little, it wasn’t the good kind of upchuck either (if there is indeed a good kind), it was upchuck that flows like acid, seeping into seemingly every orifice, burning the shyte out your face and half choking you to submission. The upchuck was not a particularly pleasant experience but listening to VA Punk goes 90’s, Vol 2 was undoubtedly a markedly worse experience.

One album, twelve current modish bands covering twelve past iconic anthems; an hour of my life spent battling to keep down breakfast; tending to bleeding ears; gathering shards of a shattered…

I have tried to describe Alex Winston’s debut release King Con to my friends. I tried using label tags like Indie; Indie Synth ; Synth Pop; Math Pop; Math Indie. I tried going the instrumental route; Poppy piano; House Back beats; Rhythmic strumming acoustic strings; the occasional tambourine ; clapping and even a xylophone for good measure. I tried the whole band mash up comparison; think the Cardigans meet the White Strips meet Metric meet a Choir meet Fiona Apple but somewhere between the 60’s and 70’s. Every method of musical descriptor failed to capture the majesty of this unicorn…

Lets be honest, be it by harmonious hook or chromatic crook , we live in an Indie-infested world. So much so that if we were to refer to the archetypal Zombie apocalyptic script, listening to Indie could be considered a dire symptomatic stage of a world-wide epidemic. Yes, you could perceive this as a boorish “diss” on this blooming musical genre; but seriously the cute harmonies; the convincing heart sore lyrics; the artsey manufactured ambience and delightfully coloured song titles have just become too common; too familiar; too predictable just too “blegh” (that’s me self inducing my gag reflex). I…

Like moths to a flame, they burn to continue burning…, a perfect aphorism describing the tendencies of the music industry to flood the market with derisive clones akin to the flavour of the moment. Perfect example being the dark dark dark dark days succeeding the naissance of the Cattle-call movement, in the blink of an eye we had neatly packaged Pretty Young Things (PYT’s from hereon) wearing strategically placed slips of clothing whilst mooing out pseudo-nympho, sexual innuendo laden aberrations of song. Briteny Spears; Christina Aquilera; Jessica Simpson; Pink; JoJo; Mandy Moore; et al, Indeed some of these (I hesitate…

We all have THAT ONE BAND; THAT ONE BAND that through a force unknown to science, draws us in and gravitates our musical sense towards a particular genre, that is a complete misnomer given our previous tendencies yet it remains on repeat in your media player for a month and never gets deleted from your playlist.

I never liked indie, Oasis were a two-piece tramp clown act and Blur was a one man bad haircut cacophany. Yes, my ignorance was pacific, but those were my teeny days were i clothed myself with Green Day, Live, Soundgarden et al, Fifteen years…

Rival Schools' debut album United by Fate (2002) is considered, in my humble opinion, as one of the groundbreaking albums released in the early twenty-naughties. Welding uncomprimising moody deep crunching backgrounds with bullocking drum work, screwdriving intricate leads persuing hammering solid base undertones as chiselling vocal verses meander effortlessly into anthemic choruses,it was unapologetic garage-on-your-doorstep music that wrenched your gut just for the sake of wrenching guts. if you have trouble believing me take a listen to the posterchild single Used for Glue.

With all of the above acting as a yardstick, Pedals (2011), Rival Schools' sophomoric major release (excluding…