Nite Songs

  Getting close to the top of the chart now as we head into the Top 20. Needless to say that anything in this bit you've missed, you really should investigate pronto... *** 20. GULP - "Beneath Strawberry Moons" A genuine unexpected triumph of an album - Gulp's third effort sounds like some sort of cross between the icy electronica of New Order and the laconic psychedelia of Mazzy Star with maybe a hint of All About Eve and Ooberman at their most melancholy. Featuring Super Furry Animals man Guto Pryce, this is another great album which seems to have undeservedly sailed under a lot of people's radars. *** 19. BENEFITS - "Constant Noise" Honestly, I'm not sure if Benefits actually could  have pulled the same trick twice following on from their debut album  Nails  last year. That record was so brutal and uncompromising, veering into pure white noise in places, that it really was the sort of thing you could only really listen to once. However, here's...

  "I had seen, I had touched, I had tasted and I truly believed…"  - The Darkness  - Love Is Only A Feeling Hands up, I could've put this article out a few weeks ago when we first stumbled into 2003 on the Sounds From The Junkshop retrospectives but I held it back, knowing that instalment number 100 was coming up here. Similar to what I did with number 50 when we looked at the Backyard Babies and Buckcherry , I wanted to make sure that our hundredth edition of SFTJ wasn't just with some band who'd made a big but brief impression on your writer's tastes but a group who were genuine game-changers... I seem to remember it was autumn 2002 when I first encountered the Darkness opening a three band bill at Bradford Rio's with Sugarcoma (woah, now THERE'S a name from the past!) and headliners the Wildhearts on later in the evening. I literally just caught the last two songs of their set (then-current single I Believe In A Thing Called Love and its B-side Lo...

  The prospect of a new album from Lowestoft's daftest is never something you'll hear us complaining about here at Nite Songs. Since reforming a decade or so ago, the band have been on a pretty solid run with three of the four albums they've done since then being solid additions to the band's catalogue. Opener Welcome Tae Glasgae barrels through on a solid headbanger of a riff but it's second track It's Love Jim  that kicks things into gear properly with its joky Star Trek based lyrics, pounding drums and guitars and Justin's trademark falsetto being used just to the right degree to make things work. One thing that you'll notice about the early tracks on Motorheart  is that they've got a refreshingly stripped-back feel with an almost garage rock like intensity to the songs. Given that the Darkness have more than once in the past fallen into the trap of over-egging the musical pudding to the detriment of the tunes, it's quite refreshing to hear th...

Well, we did the intro yesterday and I guess we can't put this off any longer unfortunately. Hold yer noses, we're going in, the Nite Songs Worst 50 Albums Ever countdown officially starts here... *** 50. BAD RELIGION - "Into The Unknown" (1983) Of course, nowadays Bad Religion are rightly hailed as a seminal LA punk band (we'll ignore the fact that Brett Gurewitz's Epitaph label was responsible for inflicting the musical abortion that is Falling In Reverse on the world in recent years) but it almost didn't happen like that. Following their furious 1982 debut How Could Hell Be Any Worse? , the group decided on a radical change of direction by going prog, complete with synthesisers. I mean, fair play, they weren't the only early US punk band to try a change of sound that confused their fans (fellow early '80s hardcore types TSOL infamously first went goth/art-rock and then biker rock) but it's safe to say that jumping over to the sort of music ...