Cal Cashin

UK-based music critic and historian, exploring weird and beautiful music.

Album Review Compendium (2019 - ?)

The Line of Best Fit •

Trá Pháidín – Cloch 's Claí | album review

A little under a decade ago, four out of the six players on Cloch ‘s Claí were in a Cork City indie band called Little Indigo. Guitarist Peadar-Tom Mercier recollects that they “would have been the next Fontaines D.C.,” or something, but for one reason or another that didn’t happen. A different beast altogether is the group that rose from their ashes: Trá Pháidín are a band who could never be the next anything – but to you, they could be everything.
One of the most fiercely original groups oper...
The Quietus •

Nate Mercereau – Fantastic Thoughts | The Quietus

In 2022, Andre 3000 was beginning work on his solo debut New Blue Sun. It was to be a total left turn from his ‘Hey Ya!’ heyday, and so Three Stacks tasked LA drummer and producer Carlos Niño with assembling a killer jazz ensemble to really get the best out of his flutework. The guitarist Niño brought in would prove crucial, filling the empty spaces with shimmering textures and helping to tie the electroacoustic jams together. “He’s a magician,” Andre 3000 said: “he hardly ever sounds like he is...
The Quietus •

Nature Boy: Driving Through Belgium by Anton Pearson | The Quietus

Locked into the grind of city living, it’s easy to feel depressed, isolated, alienated. The world we live in feels so hostile, and it’s all too easy to feel completely disconnected from your peers, your purpose, and, especially the Earth itself. If you’re particularly unlucky, you might see less than a dozen trees and a sole grassy knoll during your daily flat-bus-work-bus-flat strife knot.


It would be naive to say the fatigue and implied hopelessness of modern life are solely down to our los...
The Quietus •

Khun Narin Electric Phin Band – III | The Quietus

The tale of the Khun Narin Electric Phin Band is one of the feel-good stories of the global music ecosystem. In 2013, a grainy YouTube video emerged. In glorious 144p, it showed a village in rural North Thailand, where a large psychedelic ensemble were casually easing through a set of wigged-out free rock jams like it was the most natural thing in the world. DIY instruments – most notably a home-made phin (a traditional three stringed lute) run through a circuit of cheap pedals – blasted through...
The Quietus •

Sergeant – Symbols | The Quietus

From Belgium, an experimental rock trio unafraid to slice up their own jams with a pair of garden shears and dance merrily amongst the shredsBrussels-based plunderphonic rock band Sergeant’s self-titled 2023 debut saw the band homaging “DJ Shadow in reverse”, splicing and collaging their own wayward jams into avant-pop songs. Jagged little guitars, discreetly flickering beats, and detached, lost-sounding vocals pushed the band towards a phantom pop music, but maybe more of a record of moments r...
The Quietus •

My New Band Believe – My New Band Believe | The Quietus

Formerly of Black Midi, Cameron Picton goes all acoustic, but there's no shortage of ideas on the thrilling debut from his latest projectWhilst former bandmate Geordie Greep surged straight into an obvious solo career, just months after the breakup of Black Midi, Cameron Picton took some time out of the game to take stock. He’d spent the first years of his adult life touring the world, and the result was some kind of cocktail of disenfranchisement and exhaustion. With no urge to jump into anothe...
The Quietus •

Reissue Of The Week: Circle X’s Prehistory | The Quietus

Much has been written about the Transatlantic fallout of punk rock, with every crevice of the era meticulously scanned in the hope of a lost classic. Whilst Circle X’s fractious run, two albums and two EPs, over a span of seventeen years, might not signify complete unknown status to seasoned crate-diggers, their minimal place in the history books belies their brilliance. 


Formed in 1978, in Louisville, Kentucky – by brothers Rik and David Letendre, alongside Tony Pinotti and Bruce Witsiepe –...
The Quietus •

DJ Narciso – DENTRO DE MIM | The Quietus

The Angolan-Portuguese producer's first foray on an international label provides a perfect entrypoint – not to just to one artist's sound, but to the thrilling, pulsating, grinding world of batidaIn countries with a bloody history, built on empire, it has long been the case that migrants, and the children of migrants, from formerly colonised countries are responsible for a disproportionate amount of cutting edge culture. In Britain, the examples are too numerous to recall; from lover’s rock and...
Clash Magazine Music News, Reviews & Interviews •

Legss - Unreal | Review | Clash Magazine

“Some people only exist to prang me the fuck out,” decrees the softened Scouse accent of ‘Unreal’’s unreliable narrator Ned Green amidst the hurley-burly of early album highlight ‘Sleepers, Awake’. Amidst the catharsis of its geometric, interlocking guitar rhythms, and bee-in-yer-bonnet brass maelstroms, Green’s spoken-word narrations are cut-glass, surgical observations that glimmer with the same wry wit that scaffolds the best work by Richard Dawson, Neil Blackwell, Chris Morris, etc. He searc...
The Quietus •

Ethel Cain – Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Love You Forever | The Quietus

Combining the dream pop Americana of Preacher's Daughter with the drones and experiments of Perverts, the Florida-born singer-songwriter-producer may just have come up with her most realised project to date, finds Cal CashinIllinois slowcore band Good Night & Good Morning were criminally underrated during their original lifespan. Their one full length LP Narrowing Type, an enveloping mix of hibernal slowcore, ambient guitar squall and twinkling vibraphone, was released in 2011 without much fanfa...
The Quietus •

Visible Mending: Caroline 2 is Our Album of the Week | The Quietus

Youthful London-based post-rock octet take a kintsugi approach to songcraft on their second album, with a little help from Caroline PolachekIn recent weeks I’ve been obsessed with r/visiblemending, a joyously strange corner of the internet. Users of this subreddit don’t simply mend their own clothes, already a revolutionary act in the age of fast fashion, but do so in ways that make their garments look as though they have been amateurishly hand-fixed. Cross stitches in brightly coloured thread,...
The Quietus •

Quade – The Foel Tower | The Quietus

Whenever the very best music that falls into the “post-rock” category comes up, I can’t help but feel that it is all music shaped profoundly by the place in which it was conceived. The jagged music of Slint and Godspeed You! Black Emperor celebrates the weirdness of desolate North American landscapes, whilst listening to the ever-enchanting music of Tortoise, Storm&Stress and Gastr Del Sol conjure a very specific “Chicago sound”.

But does a British equivalent exist? If the answer is yes, there...
The Quietus •

Arthur Russell – Open Vocal Phrases Where Songs Come In And Out | The Quietus

It is testament to the astral, prolific talent of Arthur Russell that two decades after the first reissues of his archival material garnered widespread acclaim, crystals of such high quality are still being unearthed.


2023’s Picture of Bunny Rabbit and 2019’s Iowa Dream hinted at the depth and breadth of what remains unheard in the Arthur Russell Archives, but it is perhaps surprising that it has taken so long for a high-quality live recording to see the light of day. 2020’s Sketches for Worl...
Clash Magazine Music News, Reviews & Interviews •

Black Country, New Road - Forever Howlong | Reviews | Clash Magazine

During their original run with frontman Isaac Wood, Black Country, New Road quickly earned themselves a feverish and obsessive fanbase. Something about Wood’s raw sprechgesang vignettes, combined with the band’s behemoth post-rock-klezmer-art-punk fusion, really spoke to a lot of people. In many internet music circles, ‘Ants From Up There’ and ‘For the First Time’ remain absolutely core texts.Following Wood’s departure in spring 2022, the six remaining members of BCNR had to do a whole lot of so...
The Quietus •

Hesse Kassel – La Brea | The Quietus

La Brea is a truly inexplicable, revelatory debut. Spending 80 minutes with Chilean band Hesse Kassel, and their writhing, scampering, soaring post rock, is as genuinely life-affirming as it gets. It is music of the most cathartic and reinvigorating nature, and an elemental listening experience that makes everything feel new, exciting, and possible. The sextet from Santiago spend most of their debut trawling dark, gristly undertow, but within their sprawling, flowing ten minute songs, they alway...
Clash Magazine Music News, Reviews & Interviews •

Ichiko Aoba - Luminescent Creatures | Reviews | Clash Magazine

2020’s monumental ‘Windswept Adan’ was really the album on which Japanese folk singer Ichiko Aoba crystallised a vision she had been working on for the best part of a decade. With the same kind of pastoral folk songs at its core that had defined her career to that point, truly luscious arrangements elevated Aoba’s music from from the pleasant to the boundless and sublime. With her music, and also her Japanese-language lyrics, Aoba conjured a fully realised world far more fantastical, painterly,...
The Quietus •

Florence Adooni – A.O.E.I.U. (An Ordinary Exercise In Unity) | The Quietus

Spiritual jazz, highlife, disco, and soul – the international debut album of Ghanaian gospel singer Florence Adooni writhes with an endless array of bold genre fusions. Every groove here is rich, vibrant, as Adooni’s powerhouse voice breathes life into a party of playful arrangements and erratic polyrhythms.

Adooni was born in Kumasi, Ghana’s home of highlife music, to parents of Frafra heritage, a region renowned for its embarrassment of soul and disco riches. So whilst the effortless fusions...
The Quietus •

The Evil That Men Do: Cowards by Squid | The Quietus

At the tail-end of the 2010s, Squid emerged alongside Black Midi and Black Country, New Road as part of a golden trifecta for the iconoclastic South London singles label Speedy Wunderground. A real revitalising moment for British guitar music, this trio of spookily young groups combined virtuous musicality with a diverse and incongruous canon of influences to make some of the most exciting and experimental rock music seen on these shores for generations.


Helmed by singing drummer Ollie Judge,...
The Quietus •

Lightwave – Cités Analogues | The Quietus

Re-issued from a 1988 limited-run cassette, this piquant slab of progressive Parisian electronics simultaneously looks back to 1970s kosmische and forward to the uncanny tones of the Ghost Box labelSince its invention, the synthesizer has been a powerful tool that has allowed artists to harness feelings of utter loneliness and detachment in their music, often to match feelings of disenfranchisement and disassociation with a technologically transforming world. Alongside the rise of Kraftwerk, the...
The Quietus •

Reissue of the Week: Violent Femmes’ Hallowed Ground

Violent Femmes’ self-titled debut is one of the most essential American indie rock records of the early 80s, but it’s not the only album by the band you must have in your collection, argues Cal Cashin, as he re-examines its unfairly overlooked follow-up Hallowed Ground 40 years onViolent Femmes self-titled debut album remains a core text of the teenage angst curriculum. It is a perfect document of that very particular feeling of experiencing love, lust and loss for the first time, and it’s still...
The Quietus •

Post-Whatever: You Never End by Moin is our Album of the Week | The Quietus

Joined by a slew of collaborators, from Coby Sey to Sophia Al-Maria, the London trio have made one of the most forward-looking guitar albums of the yearThere is something deeply rotten throughout the island of Britain at the moment, and even more miserably so in London, its moribund capital. Everyone I know is depressed; everyone you know is depressed. And every time you venture to a major population centre, it looks like Disco Elysium: everyone there is also depressed. A shared misery, a univer...
The Quietus •

Karl D’Silva – Love Is A Flame In The Dark | The Quietus

Sometime Damo Suzuki, Thurston Moore and Oren Ambarchi collaborator, branches out on his own with an album of iconoclastic technicolour popMusically, South Yorkshire has been a region that has historically punched above its weight, one of the country’s great producers of artistic iconoclasts. The 70s’ greatest jazz guitarist, John McLaughlin, was kicking around the streets of Donny before he took his skronk across the pond, whilst Threads-era Sheffield was the backdrop for The Human League, Caba...
Loud and Quiet •

Mabe Fratti – Sentir que no sabes - Loud And Quiet

Frighteningly prolific, Guatemala-born Mexico-based avant-garde cellist, composer and dabbler Mabe Fratti has charted so much ground in so little time. Since her 2019 debut album, Fratti has carved out a niche as a genuine one-off, a first-rate explorer and experimenter of bold and blazing sounds.Perhaps that of a Central American Arthur Russell is a lazy comparison, given the difference in the sound of their records, but given their hunger for exploration, prolific peaks and their virtuosity on...
Loud and Quiet •

Kassa Overall - Animals - Album Review | Loud And Quiet

Very few things satisfy quite like the seamless fusion of jazz and hip hop, when swirling sax slivers around silken beats, and the trumpets get a bit involved. Kassa Overall, the supreme beatsmith and bandleader hailing from Seattle, understands this perfectly. He spent the majority of the noughties studying jazz at Oberlin and playing drums with big jazz names, but always harboured a hunger to produce hip-hop. Animals is Kassa’s third album, his first with Warp, and sees these influences stitch...
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