Showing 1 - 7 of 7
In Plain Language
B Magazine, Chanun Poomsawai, Published on 07/06/2020
» "And that's fine/ I'm wasting away," vocalist Ian Devaney announces over nervy guitars on Tournament, the opening track to Nation of Language's debut album, Introduction, Presence. "I took the long road home/ And it never paid off for me."
From the highway all the way to church
B Magazine, Chanun Poomsawai, Published on 22/03/2020
» This year's first unlikely collaboration has officially arrived courtesy of Houston trio Khruangbin and their fellow Texans, Leon Bridges.
Indie rock done right
B Magazine, Chanun Poomsawai, Published on 09/02/2020
» "When I was 18/ Someone got stabbed in a church/ But I got used to it/ And forgave all the ways and the names/ It was so long ago, anyways," vocalist Jeremy Gaudet recounts on Murder In The Cathedral, the opening track to Kiwi Jr.'s debut album, Football Money. The vivid songwriting, buoyed by his bandmates' jangly instrumentation, is delivered with the kind of drawl that would have you thinking fondly of Pavement's Stephen Malkmus and The Strokes as well as the Modern Lovers' Jonathan Richman and Parquet Courts' Andrew Savage.
Keeping them keen
B Magazine, Chanun Poomsawai, Published on 02/06/2019
» In many ways, the enduring success of UK four-piece Keane is a curious phenomenon. Formed in 1995, the quartet of four rather ordinary-looking white lads from East Sussex rose to rock prominence with their debut album, 2004's Hopes And Fears. Thanks to the strength of radio-friendly singles like Somewhere Only We Know and Everybody's Changing, they were able to contend with a lot of their rock/indie contemporaries who were also just starting out then -- The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, The Futureheads, Razorlight and The Libertines. While some of those bands have lost their steam or even vanished in the aftermath of the indie-rock heyday, it seems that Keane are still alive and well despite the six-year hiatus following 2013's hits compilation, The Best Of Keane.
When sleaze gets slick
B Magazine, Chanun Poomsawai, Published on 05/05/2019
» Fat White Family, for the uninitiated, are a South London group trading in all manners of classic punk depravities, rock'n'roll drug habits and songs with imaginatively risqué titles (Cream Of The Young, Is It Raining In Your Mouth?, Bomb Disneyland). Led by founding frontman Lias Saoudi, the band is notorious for their outrageous live gigs, where shocking antics and nudity are not uncommon. As a band, this collective transgression is the unique selling point upon which their 2013 debut album Champagne Holocaust and its follow-up Songs For Our Mothers hinged. It's also the very factor that contributed to "the sort of classic stereotypical drug meltdown", as Lias puts it in his recent interview with Noisey, which led to them getting dropped by US-based Fat Possum Records.
James Blake's Changing Form
B Magazine, Chanun Poomsawai, Published on 10/03/2019
» "Now I'm confiding, know I may have/ Gone through the motions my whole life/ I hope this is the first day/ That I connect motion to feeling," James Blake wears his heart on his sleeve on the piano-driven opener/title track of his fourth studio album, Assume Form. The candid openness with which Blake addresses depression and anxiety, the struggles he's confessed of having since his 2011 debut album took off, is stunning to witness especially for an artist whose career is mostly built on nuances, abstraction and negative spaces.
