The pioneers of the powerchord might have confounded listeners with 1968’s bucolic masterpiece, but Village Green…’s irreproachable songwriting and teeming guitar textures conjured a rose-tinted nostalgia like few others.
The Leeds four-piece formed just before the UK was plunged into its first lockdown, but that hasn’t stopped them turning heads over the past two years. Their debut album looks set to deliver on the promise.
The unstoppable eddies of surf rock permeated pop in the 1960s, and its reverb drenched, tremolo-picked sound all stemmed from one man. Dick Dale’s bewildering guitar work defines his, still jaw-dropping, debut LP.
At a time when the genre was increasingly commercial and homogenized, two of West Coast punk’s most influential songwriters reunited to show the kids how it was done.
Ripping apart and re-moulding genres with an artistic zeal, Fear of Music was Talking Heads’ absurdist masterstroke. Fascinating too, is the guitar’s often jarring and impulsive role within its delirious turmoil.
Already got festive fatigue from hearing Slade, Wizard and Mariah Carey one time too many? Fear not, MC Taylor’s contemplative Christmas album is the perfect antidote.
Angry, messy and fraught with all sorts of complications, this is how Greg Ginn and his Ampeg Dan Armstrong made one of the defining records of the hardcore scene.
Thematically centered around the pain of maintaining a relationship at long distance. Death Cab’s cinematic fourth album still stands as the high watermark of their songwriting expertise, sewn together with warm acoustics, haunting piano and washes of reverb-drenched guitar chords.
