The Music Note

Two months after his surprise intimate gig at The Lock Tavern in Camden, Josh Rouse returned to London last Wednesday to perform at the Islington Assembly Hall, in support of his most recent album,  The Happiness Waltz . Josh took to the stage with a full band to play to a sold-out crowd of 700 fans, a very different atmosphere to The Lock Tavern gig, in which he played a solo acoustic set in a cosy upstairs room in a pub. Since I purchased the tickets to the gig through PledgeMusic , my friend Steve and I got the opportunity to attend a meet and greet with Josh and watch him and his band soundcheck in preparation for the evening's performance. The soundcheck was like a concert in itself, with Josh playing eight tracks, all of which got us excited for the night ahead, though it was hearing the first verse and chorus of 'It Looks Like Love' that really got my feet tapping, and left me hoping that the song would be included in the evening's setlist. I always enjoy watc...

Franz Ferdinand have announced that their fourth studio album,  Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action , will be released on August 26. The album, which is the band's follow-up to 2009's Tonight: Franz Ferdinand , has a confirmed track listing of ten songs, seven of which were debuted recently at an intimate gig in Glasgow. This album will be an interesting and eagerly awaited release, especially since Tonight , quite deservedly, received a mixed response from critics upon its release. I think part of the problem with Tonight ,   was that it was previewed as a heavy departure from the previous sounds of their 2004 debut Franz Ferdinand  and 2005's follow-up You Could Have It So Much Better , with the album promising Jamaican influences, along with elements of electro. Upon release however, it was clear that aside from one or two tracks,  Tonight pretty much sounded like any other Franz Ferdinand album, which would have been great if the material on it had o...

  Released as the second single from their 2006 album Ganging Up On The Sun , I initially found this Guster track to be somewhat of a grower, especially in comparison to the rest of the album, the majority of which I warmed to almost immediately upon the first few listens. However, there is something so subtlety endearing about the song, a quality that perhaps refreshingly, isn't glaringly obvious on first impression, that over time the track gradually featured more and more frequently in my Guster listening marathons. All aspects of the song - vocals, lyrics, instrumentation, tempo, structure - all contribute to an overall captivating listen, with verses that feature lines of "Shining like a work of art / Hanging on a wall of stars / Are you what I think you are" leading into choruses that offer up equally dreamy lyrics - "You're riding with me tonight / Passenger side, lighting the sky / Always the first star that I find". Though, the defining moments occu...