Read Poets Society

    The internet is a wonderful thing. It really is. With mobile devices we have instant access to any information that we need, and anyone with a keyboard (hey, like me!) can voice their opinions to the rest of the internet completely unfiltered and unregulated. I find it endlessly fascinating and equally as worrying, then, that while theoretically the world is becoming more and more connected every passing day, isolation and loneliness seem to be inescapable parts of the modern human experience. This is one of the key ideas to take into consideration, I think, when trying to unpack the baffling, skeletal and icy classic fourth album by Radiohead,  Kid A .     More than enough has been said and written about the state of frustration and exhaustion Thom Yorke was experiencing at the end of the twentieth century as a result of the massive success of Radiohead, particularly the equally as classic  OK Computer . For those who don't know and need to b...

   Indie/emo staples Pianos Become The Teeth have completed one of the most remarkable shapeshifting acts in recent memory with the arrival of their fourth full length album, Wait For Love . Initially, on their first record Old Pride , they presented an incredibly raw and emotionally draining screamo experience which was honed to near perfection on their second full length, The Lack Long After (now a screamo and emo standard, and for good reason). 2014's Keep You  saw them double back into a more subdued sound, notable mostly for vocalist Kyle Durfey's stylistic shift away from screaming in favour of a more traditional singing performance. It must be said, though, that this shift was down to much more than simply a decision to stop screaming - the sound as a whole shifted to a more tired melancholy in comparison to the frantic and almost panicked devastation of the first two records. Keep You was a devastatingly beautiful album in its own right, but definitely had its fla...

    Swell is the fourth full-length album from Minnesota natives Tiny Moving Parts, and it is a strong continuation of their mid-west influenced emo rock sound. It is the band's most accessible album to date, which I think works in their favour greatly as it gives a lot of these tracks an instantly singable quality that has always been visible to fans but is now at the forefront of their sound. The mathy riffs that are heavily reliant on tapped technique are still here in spades, but Swell also sees the band refine the melodic part of their sound, producing some of the catchiest choruses and most uplifting moments in their discography so far. Now, if you are anything less than a devout Tiny Moving Parts fan, there may in fact be a very strong sense of unwelcome deja-vu that comes with this record (if you've heard their three previous albums). They aren't reinventing their sound by any stretch; they are taking the elements of their sound that have worked in the past and honi...

Ranked: Underoath Oh God, here we go, I’m going to attempt to rank the diverse, polarising and in places iconic discography of the legendary Underoath. As some of you may know, Underoath are one of my all time favourite bands, so I found this list particularly challenging. I also realise that for a lot of you Underoath are a band you may not know particularly well, if at all, so hopefully this can serve as a guide to those of you who want to dive into either the band or a style of music you’re not so familiar with. 7) Act Of Depression (1999) There were only 2,000 copies of Underoath’s first album  Act Of Depression  available upon release in 1999, and was out of print for a long time until it was re-released by Solid State Records following the band’s disbandment in 2013. And look, it’s not fantastic. In fact, it’s nearly unlistenable in places. The production is very scrappy, but for me the thing that stands out is the performance from original vocalist  Da...

Ranked: Kendrick Lamar This is a new section for the blog, the idea being that I go through and rank different artists’ albums from worst to best. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the lowest ranking album is a bad album (take this list for example), but simply that in comparison to the rest of the artist’s discography it is the least strong. I have plenty more of these in the pipeline, but if there are any artists in particular that you would like to see me rank please let me know and I’ll add it to the list. Kendrick Lamar’s discography is a thing of beauty at current, proof of his being one of the most accomplished rappers of this generation, if not certainly the most critically acclaimed. Sorting this one out took a while for me, because as far as I’m concerned Lamar hasn’t released anything of even remotely poor quality, but I had to make a decision at some stage and so this is the list that I’ve come up with. I’ve only included his full length studio releases, meani...