The Arcade Fire are on the verge of superstardom.Lew Guthrie III checks out their credentials and reviews new album The Neon Bible
March 2007 and The Arcade Fire are coming in like lambs and will leave like lions. As I write this feature they are playing small churches in England. By the time you read it, they will be selling tickets for arenas across the world.
It’s rare we get to see a band in a state of metamorphosis, but t...
Whisky and Music
from Issue 63 published on 20/04/2007
Few bands have captured the exuberance of drinking whiskey in the way The Pogues have. Lew Guthrie III looks back to their first two albums
When The Pogues burst on to the music scene at the end of the punk era, nobody could make head nor tail of them.
Fronted by a toothy pug-eared drunk and their ranks swollen by a bunch of sweaty boisterous youths who poured The Clash’s London all over traditional Irish music, the initial view was th...
Whisky and Music
from Issue 56 published on 01/06/2006
Fountains of Wayne are not your archetypal whiskey band. And, says Lew Guthrie III, they’re all the better for it
If you’ve been reading this music page for the last three issues or so you’ve probably spotted a trend. Lots of songs about sad lonely guys sitting in depressing bars crying in to their whiskey, reminiscing over what might have been and dreaming fruitlessly of making a fresh start.
And as Hunter mi...
Whisky and Music
from Issue 55 published on 14/04/2006
Ryan Adams has produced a huge volume of great music. Lew Guthrie III casts his eye over it, particularly last year’s Jacksonville City Nights
When Ryan Adams came crashing out of the American South he did so with the swagger of a guitar slinger and the talent of a troubled troubadour. Fearless, unpredictable and highly prolific, he’s never made it easy for himself and we’re all the better off as a result.
Take the name. He wasn’t christe...
Whisky and Music
from Issue 54 published on 03/03/2006
Lew Guthrie III on Southern Rock Opera by Drive-By Truckers – an epic concept album on the life and times of Lynyrd Skynyrd
Being a heavy rock fans has always presented a moral dilemma for anyone with a social conscience. Too often chauvinistic or downright sexist, politically insensitive and sometimes reactionary and right wing, metal and its sub-genres were particularly held up to ridicule in the late 70s when politica...
Whisky and Music
from Issue 53 published on 12/01/2006
In a new series on whisky in rock music,Lew Guthrie III looks at American alternative country rock band Richmond Fontaine
Nashville is the home of country, the place that has done more to sully the genre’s reputation than anywhere else. Conservative, reactionary, predominantly white and male, the country scene has long been dismissed by many as the last bastion of redneck cowboy values.
Travel out of Nashville in to m...
Whisky and Music
from Issue 1 published on 12/1/1999
