Read Poets Society

   Death is obviously a subject that lots of musicians have attempted to tackle, with wildly varying results. My Chemical Romance's punk-opera classic The Black Parade uses it as the central piece of an epic concept record. Sun Kil Moon's album Benji loiters around in a depressive state of rumination about the immediacy of death. And take your pick of almost any black/death/doom metal album. But rarely does an album explore death in a way that is genuinely confronting and uncomfortable to listen to; A Crow Looked At Me - the ninth Mount Eerie record and thirteenth including Phil Elverum's previous work as The Microphones - does just that, and I found it really difficult to listen to.     A Crow Looked At Me documents Elverum's wife Geneviève's  death at the hands of pancreatic cancer - a disease that kills 80% of patients within a year - leaving behind him and his eighteen month old daughter. Musically it fits snugly into a consistently above average discogra...

   On Friday Northlane released their fourth studio album Mesmer without any warning, and it's pretty awesome. Fans that were keeping up had been getting hints for a while, with cryptic announcements and a seriously cool chatbot, but Mesmer was a complete surprise for everyone, and one that has brought with it a more cohesive and complete sound for the band.    2015's  Node was a great way to open up the second chapter in the band's trajectory and featured a fantastic performance from new singer Marcus Bridge, but definitely felt like a transition album for a band that had forged such a signature sound and was in the middle of great change. Mesmer immediately feels a lot more comfortable than Node  for a bunch of reasons, which is to be expected now the band has been touring with Bridge almost non-stop for more than two years. While the production on Node didn't quite fit the sound they were going for and seemed a little flat across the board, David Bend...

   Western Sydney hip hop duo Horrorshow's fourth full length Bardo State is bursting with the kind of confidence that only comes from nine years of writing and performing with your best friend. The first two Horrorshow records felt like diary entries from rapper Solo with the musical landscapes painted by producer Adit; they were quietly content to go about their own business without worrying too much about anything else. 2013's King Amongst Many took a turn towards a slightly more pop orientated sound, like the duo were moving out of the western suburbs and into the bigger surrounding world, and Bardo State expands even further outwards.    That is the most notable thing about Bardo State ; bar a couple of exceptions ("Cherry Blossom" being the biggest exception) there is little to none of the rough around the edges charm and simplicity of the early Horrorshow records. This is likely going to turn off some fans of the older sound, but you have to remember - thos...

   I should preface this review by saying that I have always admired what Ed Sheeran has done from a distance; he manages to sit amongst the pop charts with often nothing but him and his guitar, and is a breath of fresh air in the over saturated pop landscape. I guess I kind of find myself cheering when guitar driven music or singer-songwriter tunes make it up into the pop charts. Having said this, however, I have never considered myself to be an Ed Sheeran fan; once I have actually listened to his music by itself I have never been overly blown away by anything particularly.     Divide definitely isn't Ed's worst album (it far surpasses X for me in a lot of areas), but unfortunately for the most part is falls back in to the shortcomings I have found in his previous work.    For me I think my biggest problem is that I assume (or maybe wish) I am listening to a singer-songwriter album, and so I approach listening to Sheeran's music in the same way I wo...

   Isolation is a strange thing; it can point you towards things about yourself that otherwise might have been hard to find, and can also be completely maddening to the point of self-destruction. For some there is a yearning for being alone that can only be truly relieved on the odd occasion, and when it is it gives way to a security and peacefulness that only true solitude can bring forth. Bon Iver's debut full length For Emma, Forever Ago was born out of this isolation, when musical mastermind Justin Vernon ventured out to his father's cabin in the woods one winter to be alone. This story surrounding the album and its creation has been romanticised somewhat over time, but he entered with no intention of making an album, and emerged with one of the most intensely intimate and haunting collections of songs you will ever hear on record.    You can almost feel the setting of these songs; every creak and groan of the cabin, the frosty windows, the smell of firewood -...

   The latest release from the incredibly prolific King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is Flying Microtonal Banana , and it is a continuation of the band's pursuit of freakish perfection and obsessiveness. Like the rest of their catalogue, Flying Microtonal Banana (reportedly the first of five King Gizzard records to be released in 2017) is governed by a motif, being the product of a guitar acquired by Stu Mackenzie, modified for microtonal tuning that allows for intervals smaller than the standard semitones that govern western music. This obviously lends to the album an instantly recognisable tonality that both takes a minute to get used to and quickly became one of the most enjoyable aspects of a really engaging and fun album.    The dark, murky mix of garage rock, punk and psych rock that made Nonagon Infinity so good is still there, but it seems more refined and snappy, more fully realised and ultimately more memorable. There are riffs that stay stuck in your h...