Reviews

In their early years, it was easy to dismiss My Bloody Valentine as just another cutie band, anoraked, bobbed and locked into an indie obsession with a 60s ideal of perfect pop on singles like “Sunny Sundae Smile”. Then in 1987 founder member Dave Conway left and was replaced by Bilinda Butcher, who reportedly wowed the group’s Kevin Shields, Colm Ó Coisóig and Debbie Googe by singing Dolly Parton’s “Bargain Store” at her audition.

As long as you’ve been briefed on Yorkshire local history, you know where you are with Richard Hawley. His 2009 album Truleove’s Gutter took its name from the site of an 18th century tavern whose effluent spilled into the River Don. His 2005 Coles Corner memorialized a junction outside a Sheffield Department store that was a rendez-vous for 1950s couples.

Josh Tillman had had enough. Enough of Seattle, enough of his alter-ego J Tillman (the name under which he released a number of solo albums), enough of his relationship, enough even of Fleet Foxes, the band he’d drummed with since 2008. So he “blew everything up”, filled his van with hallucinogenic mushrooms and headed for California, where he moved into a shack in Laurel Canyon and began writing a novel.

The world of Lawrence is, by all accounts, a strange one. A singer once told me that, while visiting Lawrence at home, he was taken urgently by the need to use the lavatory. As the story was presented me, Lawrence flatly refused and the singer was forced to go outside to relieve himself. No one, it seems, uses the toilet chez Lawrence, apart from Lawrence.

“I am John, and I was born in London!” The Lydon corporation re-opens for business...

Sam Shepard himself takes a rare lead in Blackthorn, which expands on the theories that Butch Cassidy somehow survived the shoot out at San Vicente, Bolivia in 1908. “I woke up and found myself alone,” he explains. “Seemed like everybody I knew was either dead or in jail. And they thought I was dead, too. So I did what any good dead person would do. I went off and raised me some horses. 20 years. That’s a big change. Quiet times.” Cassidy, in his twilight years, decides to return to America, to be reunited with family.

Unearthing the rotten core of the Fab Four's infamous label...

Four-disc monument to the Killer, containing no filler...

Glamiversary! Bolan's seminal rocker remastered with B-sides, demos and outtakes...

She & Him's Him returns to his dark, witty furrow...