The Friday 5 – Check shirts and pointy boots:5 Great alt.country bands

Well, my friends, if it hasn’t gone and happened again; yes, Friday has rolled around once more. It’s a time for the working man to put down his tools, to wipe the sweat from his brow and to relax. Well, traditionally anyway, what it generally means in these modern times is productivity drops to the [...]

Renaissance Men – Ryan Adams and Musicians with Literary Pretensions

Ryan Adams has in the past appeared to be a young man with a very short attention span, given his prolific release schedule over the last decade or so. But it seems that he has finally grown bored of an endless release cycle, even incorporating the many different genres he has recorded in. In fact, [...]

Extreme Listening Mode’s Extremely Brief Guide to 2008 – Albums

Well, that was the year that almost certainly was. If anything, it proved that we do indeed live in historic times, and one suspects that when historians look back on this year they’ll conclude that it was the year when, pretty much, everything got fucked. It wasn’t all bad, of course. Barack Obama’s incredible rise [...]

The Back Catalogue Report #1 – Ryan Adams

One of the founding tenets of ELM was that there is simply so much music about that it’s hard to know where to begin. That’s especially true when you are dealing with a prolific artist, and they don’t come much more productive than Ryan Adams. He’s been the golden boy of a modern dawn of [...]

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – Birmingham Academy

by E Streeter About a year ago I went to see Ryan Adams and the Cardinals with a friend and having seen about an hour and a quarter I was really none the wiser as to whether Ryan Adams is a rock musician trapped inside a wistful country boy’s shell, or not. I’m still not [...]

The mp3 Game

Following on from Scant Regard’s article the other day, here’s the tried and tested mp3 player game. The rules are simple; take out your mighty organ, and simply put it random. then flick, 5 times, and tell us what came up. There are no points for having a Roy Harper to Little Feat to The [...]

What Were You Thinking? Ten Terrible Albums by Ten Terrific Artists

If ever you could argue a concept is universal, then surely ‘a bad day at the office’ has a strong case. We’ve all had them – late bus, pissing rain, boss on the warpath, deadline missed, no time for lunch, bollocking from MD, work late, miss train, home at 8pm freezing, pissed off and borderline [...]

The God-Fearing Athiests – ‘Rustbelt Sun’ Review

I have a policy about support bands. I don’t see them. Yeah, yeah, I know. I could be missing the next big thing, I’m denying myself a glimpse into the formative years of potentially great artists, I’m not helping these bands develop to the next level. To which I generally respond with an unreserved and [...]

Whiskeytown – ‘Strangers Almanac’ Deluxe Edition Review

There’s been a real rash of these ‘deluxe’ editions recently. The more cynical amongst us may wonder if this is due to the downturn in sales of new CD’s. After all, these lavish packages are aimed at people who already own the album and will be willing to shell out another £15 for a few [...]

Can you make too much music?

Was thinking about Kim Deal and Frank Black after the Breeders gig (see reviews) and was comparing their respective solo outputs. The Breeders have made four albums in 20 years. In all his guises, FB is well into double figures. In terms of who has the stronger cannon, I’d plump for Deal. It’s not that [...]