No Pretense - Music Reviews

 Harry Mcilroy - harrymcilroy100@gmail.com Glass Ceilings  "2015" Glass Ceilings are an Indie pop band originating from Birmingham, England. After releasing a few singles and steadily growing their profile through confidently fiery live performances throughout 2019 the worldwide pandemic hit, an event that threatened to kill upcoming music acts stone dead. After taking most of 2020 off and going through a lineup change, Glass Ceilings return with the fantastically anthemic 2015 , a single showcasing the bands obvious mainstream-ready talent for songwriting and lyricism alike. Instantly setting the mood with a really pretty yet subtly melancholic guitar passage, 2015 is immediately impressively atmospheric. Indie and proud, this brightly dark track encapsulates the band working like a newly oiled machine. All the parts work together fantastically, as if any one element was missing it wouldn’t work nearly as well. The drums (played by Qemal Torra) are something of a highlight,...

 Harry Mcilroy Myriam Adams  "LA" Hailing from Birmingham, Myriam Adams are a self-dubbed “post-emo pop” band. Forming in 2019 as college best friends, the band is part of the UK’s burgeoning live-oriented indie-rock scene, and have been slowly building a following through high-octane live performances ever since. This mode of being for these bands became impossible after the pandemic hit, which is a problem addressed in the wonderful and affecting mini-documentary “year two” (linked below) which the band released earlier this year. It addresses the myriad of problems touring bands have had with covid, as well as the general strain on mental health the lockdown has caused. During this time away from live shows Myriams Adams have honed their songwriting skills, which is evident on their new track, LA. From the very first second, you can tell that this is going to be a crowd pleaser. Wasting no time with an extended intro, the band bursts into an emotive, driving melody that pr...

 Harry Mcilroy Black Midi - Cavalcade   genre - art-rock, noise-rock, alternative, jazz fusion   9/10 Black Midi are a (x) band hailing from London, England. You see the (x) I placed there instead of a genre? That’s because trying to pin down black midi’s new album, Cavalcade in a simple, non mastubatory genre title would be a complete waste of time. The most simple name I could come up with was “progressive jazz-fusion art-rock”, which in all honesty is even more embarrassing than simply calling it “alt-rock”. Every single damn review, think-piece and article I've read on this band refers to them as something completely disparate and confusing, so I like viewing them in a different light. I see bands like this under the banner of “post-streaming”. We now live in a time where streaming music has completely taken over how we consume and put out music. Even though the development of the internet itself started this revolution of near infinite choice, it was stream...