I couldn’t tell you what Atlanta, Georgia is famous for, but it doesn’t really matter when bands as good as Manchester Orchestra are from there because nothing else could compete.
This 19-year old band produce a sound far greater than their years suggest, with an epic mix of indie and rock. Think a cross between Death Cab For Cutie, Songs: Ohia, Placebo and Arcade Fire, and you start getting close to the awesome mixture of all-out loudness and delicate, whispery songs that feature on I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child.
The whole album seems very heartfelt, with lyrics that sound more biographical than anything I’ve heard for a while. Songs about real things you have experienced will always be better, have more passion, and be more believable. That’s why Elliott Smith was so good.
The opening track, ‘Wolves At Night‘ has everything you could want from an album opener. Crashing guitars, organs, and a chorus you remember instantly. This leans towards the Placebo end of things and it’s also the debut single from them, so you’ll be hearing it a lot by the time you read this.
One of the best songs on the album is the one that touches on the softer, quieter, Songs: Ohia end of proceedings. ‘Sleeper 1972’ is a melancholy track that seems both sad and cheerful at the same time. There was obviously a lot of emotions going into lines such as “When my Dad died, Worms ate out both his eyes”, and the choral section on this one accompanies it perfectly.
Not to be confused with the philharmonic collective from northwest England, Manchester Orchestra’s debut album will be stuck in your head for some time. I’m not talking lightly when I say it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in years.
Moose
Californian quartet No Use For A Name are considerably smarter and more musically proficient than your average melodic skate-punk band, so it’s a shame that they seem to have not gained much more than a cult following across the globe.
Bedouin Soundclash provided a surprise highlight of 2005 in their previous album, ‘Sounding A Mosaic‘; an addictive mix of soul, reggae, and ska that spawned the radio staple ‘When The Night Feels My Song’. Writing a similarly impressive follow-up was never going to be easy, but on ‘Street Gospels‘, the Canadian trio have both broadened their sound and delivered some of their finest songs to date.
Every Time I Die are back and we’re all thanking our lucky stars that they are and with their new album The Big Dirty, they’ve taken a giant leap up towards greatness. Their previous efforts were brilliant, no doubt about that, but the anger, energy and power in this new record transcends everything they’ve done, eclipsing their older material in one fell swoop.
The word legendary is generally thrown about and applied to bands that often don’t deserve such high accolades but in the case of Washington DC Rasta-punks Bad Brains it’s utterly deserved. While their early recordings gave birth to American hardcore and inspired everyone from Black Flag and Minor Threat to crank up the speed, their mid-eighties rockier records helped pave the way for alternative rock in the nineties and their fusion of reggae and rock is as ground-breaking now as it was then.
Picture this. It’s roughly lunchtime on the Friday of the 2007 Glastonbury Festival, and the crowd in front of the Pyramid Stage look visibly concerned as the torrential rain lashes down upon them. Less than half an hour later, that very same crowd is brought to life by the gypsy-punk carnival that is Gogol Bordello; hollering along to every word, waving their umbrellas, and dancing as much as the cement-like mud will allow. It’s arguably one of – if not the – highlight of the festival.
A leather jacket and some sloppy, jangling guitar chords are all very well if you’re intent on recreating the look and sound of punk’s glory days, but to tap into the spirit of artists like The Clash and Billy Bragg is a far more impressive feat. Step forward, The King Blues; a London collective that, over the past year, have wowed festival, club and squat audiences alike with their fiercely intelligent and compelling fusion of ska, reggae, folk, soul and punk attitude.
It’s fair to say that the genre known as Grindcore is without doubt the most extreme, obscene and damn right ear shattering off-shoot splintering of metal and punk to ever emerge from the dingy depths of the underground music scene.
Yeah, it’s a re-release. What the fuck you gonna do about it? If you missed ‘SSS‘ first time around, then your 2006 would have been somewhat musically lacking; so be thankful to those good folks at 
Other than having the best name in music, Radioclit are a talented duo. The pair, who have adopted London as their home town after arriving from France and Sweden, have been busy throwing down their bleepy bass-heavy remixes for a while now and when they released their Hard Working Class Vol. 1 record, everyone in the know sat up and took notice.