Forthcoming Live Reviews

Our intrepid team go forward into the night later to bring you reviews of the hottest act in space rock, The Phantom Band, and the hotly tipped septics Vetiver. Sadly, we couldn’t get anyone to do The Wombats. You’ll just have to learn to live with disappointment.

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 [...]

Ting Tings/Ida Maria – Hard Work Reaps Rewards

So, Ida Maria is back, and similar to The Ting Tings last week, not a conventional review as we have reviewed her live a few weeks ago. What did strike me is that, with both bands, the changing circumstances of when we first saw them. Ida Maria was a discovery by contributors and loyal friends [...]

Women At Gigs

I first started attending gigs in the early 90′s. It was pretty much a male preserve at the time, to be honest. Women who attended gigs tended to be there with partners, and it was a fairly aggresive audience. Around about the time of Britpop, it became noticeable that the dynamic of the crowd was [...]

Shameless attempt to cash in on their success….

Seeing as they are doing so well….. Here’s The Ting Tings on Jools Holland….. The Ting Tings She be pretty…..

Greatest Fear Comes True – Band I like at #1

The Ting Tings, championed here on ELM, held off Madonna to hit Number 1 in the UK Pop Pickers chart yesterday. Which is weird, because the song (‘That’s Not My Name’) wasn’t exactly all over the radio, has been out before and it is a strange, arthythmic thing. ELM Towers are off to see the [...]

Why do indie bands feel the need to start ‘feuds’?

Coventry’s Jam-clone hobbits the Enemy are apparently locked in a feud with stunningly average Manchester Oasis-copyists the Courteeners. It is unlikely, I’ll grant you, that we’ll need to send Henry Kissinger in to mediate on this dispute, but by God its tiresome. You cannot open the NME these days without seeing some band slagging some [...]

The Ting Tings – Glasgow King Tuts

As Talking Heads ‘Once In A Lifetime’ welcomes them onstage, it’s a sell-out but disparate crowd the Ting Tings have attracted to Tuts this evening. From the students at the front to the young urban professionals at the back, the place is quietly pulsing with anticipation when they take to the stage. A boy/girl combo, [...]

Gig-goer clichés #204 – The Scenester

ELM Towers will be vacated this evening as we head out to see current press darlings the Ting Tings (full review tomorrow.) It’s a hot ticket gig and no mistake; the venue sold out very quickly on the strength of the ‘Great DJ’ single (which is as awesome a piece of throbbing art-disco as you [...]