Cloudspeakers

For much of the 1980s and early 90s, Tim Simenon-- both under his own name and as Bomb the Bass-- worked his way up the UK producer food chain, through his work with Neneh Cherry and later producin... Read more

When Field Music announced in 2007 the group was going on hiatus, the band stressed that the break was not a break up. In the ensuing months, brothers David and Peter Brewis kept working-- the form... Read more

In theory, talent and time should be all it takes to break a band, but everyone knows making music is not a simple meritocracy. If it were, a band like the House of Love would have fared better. An... Read more

Cruising through the compulsively readable Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, last year's excellent oral history of Merge Records, one comes away with the impression that the label wouldn't hav... Read more

The Cocteau Twins' gauzy sound, by Robin Guthrie's own admission, was something of a happy accident, those sheets of shimmering guitars originally intended to disguise his modest technical skills. ... Read more

Breakthrough and backlash: with some exceptions, the former eventually begets the latter, no matter how wrongly deserved. The transition is part of the natural balance of things, and many artists u... Read more

Once upon a time, Badly Drawn Boy was a Next Big Thing. Damon Gough's debut as BDB, The Hour of Bewilderbeast, arrived back in 2000, winning the Mercury Music Prize (besting out, among others, fell... Read more

Over in some alternate universe, Suede never fumbled, flamed out, and fizzled. Guitarist Bernard Butler never embarked on a lackluster solo career, singer Brett Anderson wasn't compelled to follow ... Read more

For years, well-intentioned labels and publicists pushed Africa as some single monolithic entity rather than a collection of diverse countries, each with its own diverse musical scene. These days, ... Read more

Neil Young fans waited decades for his fabled Decade II project, later renamed Archives and finally released this year as the start-- or, technically, the continuation-- of the singer's long-simmer... Read more