Who says there are no great protest songs any more!? PJ Harvey proved this year that there is still plenty of room in the music world for a politically charged protest album about the horrors of war – winning the Mercury Prize along the way. The most striking thing about Let England Shake, though, isn’t…
One woman hype machine Lana Del Rey unleashed her new single ‘Born To Die’ today with the above ‘audio video’. The single builds on Lana’s growing reputation of producing dark and soulful pop songs that are as catchy as hell. This one features a killer vocal hook: “Don’t make me sad / Don’t make me…
If any Christmas song was ripe for an emotional and heartstring-tugging xx makeover, it’s Wham’s festive classic ‘Last Christmas’. Today on Radio 1’s Live Lounge The xx put their distinctive spin on this well-known festive tale of lost love. Check it out and let me know what you think: As well as covering ‘Last Christmas’…
This past January, one of the biggest news stories in the music industry occurred when Beats Music launched in the U.S. Since then, there have been even more, and perhaps even bigger, stories making headlines. Beats has remained a prominent figure, as expected, and upped its share of the market after being purchased by Apple for…
Number one in our run down of the top albums of 2011 unsurprisingly goes to The Horrors, for their rich, textured and nuanced third album Skying. After a spot of label trouble the Southend band decided to go it on their own and produced Skying themselves – a decision which led to them making an album…
Second albums are supposed to be difficult for everyone. In the case of Florence Welch, whose debut album was the ridiculously successful Lungs, this follow-up album was supposed to be more in the realms of impossible than difficult. Luckily for Florence, she doesn’t seem to give a damn about all this and just concentrates on…
With Christmas fast approaching and the thick end of 2011 behind us, it’s time to take stock and look back at the albums that soundtracked our year – and what better way to do that than a good old fashioned top 10 list!? We’ve gone back through all of our album reviews over the past…
2011 was the year Leicester lads Kasabian released their fourth album and became arguably the biggest rock band in the country. After West Ryder… established them as a much more inventive and cerebral band than the ‘lad-rock’ naysayers gave them credit for, the superbly titled Velociraptor! upped their populist appeal and added sweeping melodies to…
Here’s Philip Lickley’s verdict on this years X Factor winners single. If you would like to contribute to All-Noise, get in touch on submissions@all-noise.co.uk James Arthur – ‘Impossible’ {rating} Buy: Impossible I have a confession to make that will put me at odds with a lot of people in my age bracket: I’ve never watched…
We’re coming up to the end of the year, which means there’s currently a deluge of ‘best of’ lists hitting us from all angles online. I don’t like to dwell too much on picking out the ‘best’ when it comes to albums as to pick one excellent album out as ‘better’ than another seems a…
