Red House Painters

Chucks are prone to collaborations that's the reason why HUF San Francisco worked on the Converse Skidgrip model by using "H" pattern-rich fabric on the upper. Read More

Popping up for a limited time between the 26th and 29th November, Red or Dead will be gracing London's Carnaby street with its presence. Read More

Phil Taylor will play Raymond van Barneveld in the last four of the PartyPoker.com Grand Slam of Darts after both men enjoyed comfortable victories at the quarter-final stage. Read More

Our list of the decade's best music naturally didn't cover every album our music writers loved in the '00s, so we're giving them the chance to big-up their personal favorites here—these are the discs that didn't make our big list, but that nevertheless are worthy of your attention. Read More

i think so. in fact i’d be so bloody bold (though not really) to say that this shit is just red house painters turned way the fuck up. actually that’s a pretty stupid thing to come out with. retraction, your honour. anyhoo. this is the new ep. and all my favourite jesu shit comes out on ep. seems more suited to the two or four tracks, thirty minutes format than the hour long long player. don’t ask me why. it’s not like i don’t have the required saintly patience for this kindof thing. coz i do. it’s just that pop music (which relatively speaking this is) should be short and sweet. it should be a fizzing burst of adrenaline. now obviously this ain’t no shot of epinephrine. even tranqued sloths would be fiddling with the 33/45 function on the turntable on first listen. no what you get is some bastard form of chugging alt-rock (gaah, horrible term) , an almost bliss pop-like structure, melody (which admittedly is sometimes avalanche buried) and post-rock (stop, enough, please…) portentousness. why does all this stuff (nadja, isis, pelican to a lesser extent) make me wanna dig out my snow metaphors? or to put it another way it’s a tar-pit you can hum along to. it’s like a radio edit of that nadja covers album, with it’s deadly combo of fuzz, tunes and not quite glacial pace. all sabbath drone and phil spector miasma. it’s like a narcotics-era dylan carson smooching kevin shields. where was i? yeah, jesu. opiate sun. caldo verde. four tracks. twenty five minutes. losing streak reduced is just rawk played at the wrong speed. there’s even a lumbering solo in there. and while not quite napalm death, it’s not quite stars of the lid neither. like if swervedriver got absolutely anabolically tanked up. the most silver-esque track on here. and everything flirts felicitously with the warmer side of doom. particularly on morning light . it’s all subtle unfurls and evolutions. it’s all arpeggiated laments and vocalized malaise. it’s all about gravityRead More

The buzz around local dreamy folk group the Wilderness of Manitoba continues to build in some pretty likely places , and it's easy to see why: their debut EP, Hymns of Love and Spirits , is an ethereal, reverb-soaked finger-picking slumber party with lush harmonies and sad overtones. Read More

got a bit of writerly block today so i’ll open with a joke. how do you find will smith in the snow? sorry. come back. it’s this damned sobriety, this vicious ocular ulcer, the grey grind of existence. it’s getting to me. and whilst the posts of recent yore have been all about the bright, the breezy, the pop and the chorus and the skewed tune , this week has been (mostly) all about the noise and the doom and the wordless mirthlessness of life. y’see the former’s been nothing more than a tatty threadbare blanket to cover up the essential horror of life in the last half of oh nine. well what better soundtrack to yr monthly existential crisis than some folks who dig swans and red house painters and codeine and low. don’t get me wrong i ain’t mersault, killing arabs and wandering around camus’s world of anomie. and this ain’t anywhere as bleak as michael gira’s early nihilistic musings. but it’s not the kind of shit you play in the park on a sunny day flying kites. it’s not dinner party background twinklings. it’s not gonna be the first dance song at any weddings you go to. billy joel will never close a concert by banging out something from this ep on the piano. though the world would be a better place if these things were true… *sigh*. it is a rum bugger of an ep. and in the vein of all good ep’s doesn’t want to settle too long in one place. it thrusts it’s fingers bloodily into the dark heart of the eighties, dips it’s toes willingly into the distorto-core of what they used to stupidly call alt-rock, gently licks the earlobe of shoegazerry. they sprawl with intent like the electric murk of a crazy horse. they bluster with the narcotic grace of a mascis. they scowl with the harrumphing ennui of kozelek and eitzel. you get the overdramatized picture, non? if you want some kindof namedrop see-all-the-bands-i-know comparison the epic glower of iliketrains or the lush maudlin of tindersticks (particularly on their recent constellationRead More