Tag: ska

Millie Manders Taking Truth, Breaking Ties
Album Reviews

Millie Manders and The Shutup – Telling Truths, Breaking Ties

Female-fronted power punk that takes the listener by the horns

After half a decade as an absolute stalwart of UK Ska Punk, Millie Manders and The Shutup have finally put an album together.

Now, it’s always a challenge reviewing something by someone you are totally in awe of. Not only is Millie utterly ferocious in performance – whilst managing to be friendly and generous in person – she also lives with a cut-me-in-half-and-I-bleed-truth integrity. Whether its her youth musician development tutoring, or her unceasing championing of the under-funded and under-loved Norfolk Arts scene, she’s there. Plus she drew a unicorn mermaid that my 6 year old daughter thought was amazing. She’s slightly intimidating really, but that’s fine, because truly awesome people are meant to be.

The Warrington Ska Punk Podcast #1

The Warrington Ska Punk Podcast
The Warrington Ska Punk Podcast
The Warrington Ska Punk Podcast #1
/

Pook from Pookout Records joins Chris for our first ever Podcast!

Featuring tracks from a range of cool bands, with a weirdly high number of them based in Japan for some reason…

Album Reviews

3dBs Down – Get Your Retaliation In First

Featuring call-and-response out the wazoo!

I missed 3dBs Down the first time round. Again. (I also missed The Skints – catch our Skints & Bedouin Soundclash review here). They still sound pretty fresh, despite my decades-long lack of observation. There’s a definite late 90s twinge going on – I’d bet good money they enjoyed the odd Spunge & Goldfinger albums back in the day – but it’s a long way from cookie cutter third wave. Its relaxed – for punk anyway – but it still has an edge

The first takeaway from your listening experience will be the great stacked vocals littered throughout. There’s dual harmonies on basically every chorus coupled with solid shout interjections in songs like “At Your Signal“, multilined vocals at the end of “Moussaka“, etc. Matt’s vocals actually remind me a bit of those of (long dead) band Bingo Tonight, especially on “Idiot Ignorant Evil“. There’s a definite a poppy hook on a lot of the singing, although it’s juxtaposed with some decently heavy riffs.

Live Reviews

The Skints with Bedouin Soundclash

Too much dancing, too much fun, the entirely correct amount of bass...

For the second of my weekend double-gig-athon (read the review of the first one here), I was back in Manchester once more, this time with tingling anticipation bubbling up inside me. After some appropriately spicy chips, myself and Josh found ourselves under the railway arches of Gorilla, ready for an evening of offbeat fun. Bedouin Soundclash

Editorials

Record Store Day 2019… Part 2

Sifting through the releases and deciding what to buy this year.

This article is part two of three. The first talks about why I don’t love Record Store Day. This one talks about the best of the Official RSD 2019 releases. And the final one bigs up some cool independent ska and punk releases you can also get this month Not much UK Ska Punk…

As I mentioned in my previous article, there’s a bit of a gap in the releases available for Record Store Day 2019, at least for lovers of UK Ska & Punk.