| Smile, LOOKALIVE! |
|
Smile, LOOKALIVE! (or SLA, for those with chilblains) wear their enthusiasm for punctuation, cute-but-meaningless titles – eg ‘Casablanca Was A Disaster Movie’ and ‘Old Habits Die Hard (And I’m Bruce Willis)’ – and American pop punk firmly on their nicely laundered Topman sleeves. This gristly slab of The All-American Rejects/My Chemical Romance/Blink 182-age is the Bath five-piece’s debut overture to the world at large, and what a briskly efficient thing it is, too. Hooks to skateboard to, vocals that would get them at least to the boot camp section of ‘X Factor’, interesting arrangements and tight-as-a-cornrow production. Nice work, boys. Frankly, all that stands between you and victory is too much fun at uni. (Anna Britten)
www.facebook.com/smilelookaliveuk Copyright Anna Britten 2011 |
THE BIG GIG
-
Gary Numan
Mike White muses on the missing link between Kraftwerk and NIN. The same year as ‘Alien’, three years before ‘Blade Runner’, awkward, acne-ridden 21-year-old Gary Webb wrote a song called ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’. It sounded…23.04.2012 READ MORE -
Philharmonia/Ashkenazy
You have to feel sorry for any young pianist braving a Chopin concerto under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy. Poacher turned gamekeeper, Ashkenazy’s glittering career as a pianist was kick-started by success at the Warsaw Chopin…23.05.2012 READ MORE


'Ringside Seats’ (EP, self-released) 




















































































































































































































