Universal Tag

In this installment of Talking Pop, author Carlo is talking about his love for Florence And The Machine. How she’s been haunting him since her first single and why music is always so closely connected to ones own biography. I’m sitting in my parents living room in 2009. The tv is on, and a Swiss television station is running. It’s sometime in the afternoon and instead of sitcoms or talkshows, they are showing music videos. There’s this one video with flowers in front of a white backdrop. A red hairedRead More

Dear Taylor, What have you done to me? I knew I was a sucker for sweet pop music even before you blew my mind with your infectious hooks and your quirky attitude – ok, let’s face it, sometimes you look a little bit like a dork. But I don’t care, because I mean that in a cute way. The way you sing songs about all your ex-boyfriends makes everyone go a little „aww“ for you. But, I mean, you’re always the one coming out top of these summer flings, highschool-love-affairs.Read More

It’s never easy, when one of the bands you were cherishing in your teenage days becomes a global brand themselves. When small venues turn into stadiums, when edges become polished surfaces, when the small indie label gets replaced by the biggest label in the world. Rise Against have been broken – not in the sense that they have ditched all their old values and turned their back on the scene, but in the sense major labels use the term for bands going gold. So they managed to sell a wagon-loadRead More

Matze’s Top 5+5 (no particular order) 1. Grey Reverend – A Hero’s Lie (Motion Audio/Rough Trade) The story of discovering the music of L.D. Brown aka Grey Reverend is a bit dull, I have to admit: I stumbled across the cover thinking „well, that’s a great photo“ and just gave it a listen. And it completely blew me away. This summer I was sitting at a beach in Portugal with „A Hero’s Lie“ on my headphones simply gazing at the sea and for a moment I was at peace withRead More

And I’ll never look up, just hold your head up And if it gets rough, it’s time to get rough It was never in question what this record would sound like. After you had heard the first two singles of the album, both released way in advance of the album, it was clear for everyone to see that it would sound like it had arrived 30 years too late. But fuck me, I did not expect the full out pastiche colored, Miami-Vice suits, Magnum moustache, fake zebra carpet styled audioRead More