Nick Southall
Nick Southall gained a degree in Media & Popular Culture with Philosophy in 2001, and became a senior writer at Stylus, the online music and film review magazine which launched in 2002. He is now a marketing manager for the University of Exeter in the UK, in which city he lives.
61 articles
List of articles in the library
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
AH, TEENAGE KICKS. Tim Wheeler may be 25 now, but he still knows that first love, while maybe not the deepest or longest-lasting, is always ...
Asian Dub Foundation: Community Music
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION formed in the mid-nineties, the product of a government-sponsored scheme designed to teach young Asian men music technology, two teachers, their pupil ...
(British) Sea Power: British Sea Power: The Decline Of British Sea Power
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
WHAT IS THE POWER of the British sea? An odd thing, for sure. A five-piece from Brighton, guitars and keys and drums and voices and ...
Clue To Kalo: Come Here When You Sleepwalk
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
IS THE LEGACY OF PUNK all those perky Californian skaters proffering spiky three-minute teen-baiting paeans to onanism and bad hair? Or is it something entirely ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
IN WHICH COMMON GOES MAD. Not sure exactly what happened in the time since 2000's excellent Like Water For Chocolate, but it appears to have had ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
WHEN I WAS 8 OR 9 YEARS OLD our school had a guest speaker come and talk to us about the years he had spent ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
DURING THE RECORDING of What's Going On Marvin Gaye would apparently lock himself alone in a room for an hour or more each day to ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
IN 1996 JOSH DAVIS RELEASED ...Endtroducing, an expansive, intricate and morose tapestry of samples that wove brass, pianos, filtersweeps and hip hop beats together, creating ...
Gillian Welch: Soul Journey (Acony)
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
GILLIAN COULD HAVE COME DOWN from the mountains after Oh Brother and made the step into the wind that would have carried her to prosperity. ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE'S TALKING ABOUT because she's come from there. She started off with So Solid Crew but as soon as they started breaking ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
HAVE WARHOL'S predictions (desires) come true? Is art now pop and is pop now art? Can either be considered real or worthy or authentic? It ...
Shack: Here's Tom With The Weather
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
IT'S FITTING that Shack's new album (their third? fourth? — the Head brothers have lost so many master tapes and had so many pseudonyms over ...
Super Furry Animals: Phantom Power
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
I SLIPPED OFF Rings Around The World like an ant off frictionless glass, its expensive and slick production screaming "maturity!" and "longevity!" at me until ...
Bees, The (Isle of Wight): The Bees: Sunshine Hit Me
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
SUNSHINE ON WAX. This record is delicious. For the last 25 years or so the most important influence on British music has not been American pop ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
AN ARTICLE IN UK STYLE BIBLE The Face recently revealed that teenage girls in Liverpool have taken to walking round the city centre dressed in ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
WELCOME to the twenty-first century alt. rock review. The Vines, as you know, are from Australia, and, as you also know, are the greatest band the ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 September 2003
I LOVED WITNESS' FIRST ALBUM. It caught me by surprise — their first singles were released at about the same time as Doves and Coldplay ...
OutKast: Speakerboxxx / The Love Below
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 23 September 2003
DRE, A.K.A. ANDRE 3000, a.k.a. Andre Lauren Benjamin, says he's run out of ways to express himself via hip hop. Big Boi, a.k.a. Antwan Andre ...
Siobhan Donaghy: Revolution In Me
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 30 September 2003
I'M IN LOVE. It's all projection of course. I've never met her, never seen her in the flesh. Know next to nothing about her. But… It's ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 20 October 2003
THERE SEEMS TO BE VERY LITTLE POINT in reviewing Echoes now that it's finally hit the stores; the UK's been able to purchase it for ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 21 October 2003
DANCE IS DEAD!, proclaim the British broadsheet press. No it isn't!, they say again, three months later, It's just gone underground again!. Whatever, Basement Jaxx ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 31 October 2003
ED HANDLEY AND ANDY TURNER have been making exquisitely structured and melodious post-techno Warptronica for more than a decade now, first as part of the ...
Missy Elliott: This Is Not a Test!
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 1 December 2003
Miss E… So Addictive, spearheaded by the epochal 'Get Ur Freak On', marked a zenith for Missy Elliott and her long-term conspirator Tim Mosley, as ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 12 January 2004
TALK ABOUT ROCKIST; Drive By consists of one hour-long track, meaning you have to listen to the latest album by this intriguing Australian three-piece all ...
Busted: A Present For Everyone
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 15 January 2004
IT IS, OF COURSE, the awkward-looking blonde one who is the genius behind Busted. And rest assured that I don't use the word "genius" lightly. ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 2 March 2004
Ly·can·thro·py n. 1. In folklore, the magical ability to assume the form and characteristics of a wolf. 2. A kind of erratic melancholy, in which one ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 23 March 2004
THE COVER SCREAMS "PSYCHEDELIC", Craig Nichols' illustrated face warped by a thousand lysergic suns. As you'd expect. The hamburger-scoffing Australian son of grunge and Britpop ...
Nick Drake: Made To Love Magic
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 3 June 2004
PRECIOUS. TRAGIC. BEAUTIFUL. SENSITIVE. DELICATE. DOOMED. These are some of the words that people use about Nick Drake, born in Rangoon, died in Tamworth-In-Arden. Drake ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 24 June 2004
THE END IS NIGH. This summer, after 15 years, Orbital will cease to be, at least in the form that we have known and loved ...
Bees, The (Isle of Wight): The Bees: Free The Bees
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 16 July 2004
FREE THE BEES FROM WHAT, exactly? The present? Debut album Sunshine Hit Me was an eccentric, eclectic affair, touched with jazz, funk, Portuguese folk, reggae ...
Bark Psychosis: ///Codename: Dustsucker
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 26 July 2004
VAPOUR TRAILS of distant airplanes turning orange in the sunset, a smear of royal umber bruise. Universes appear within your iris, tremulous rumbles consume miniscule ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 17 August 2004
SOME TWENTY YEARS AGO Scottish electronics and hi-fi specialists Linn commissioned a local folk band to record a song for them, in order to demonstrate ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 21 October 2004
SOMEHOW DIRTY VEGAS managed to shift 700,000 copies of their eponymous debut's dance-lite and ended up playing live at Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson's wedding, ...
The Verve: This Is Music – The Singles 92-98
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 4 November 2004
IN 1995, as a naïve and passionate and occasionally very stoned 16-year-old, I bought a copy of A Northern Soul on spec, because I'd read ...
U2: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 23 November 2004
AH, U2, ONCE AGAIN PERCHED at the apex of world rock cool as they prepare to release (or is that unleash?) their umpteenth album. Mullets, ...
The Chemical Brothers: Push The Button
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 28 January 2005
IN THE MID-90S it looked as if dance music was on the verge of total crossover into the rock-oriented mainstream, and for a while I ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 14 February 2005
FORGET EVERYTHING you think you know and start all over again. Bloc Party's website declares that they're "an autonomous unit of un-extraordinary kids reared on ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 11 March 2005
EXCESS, THY NAME IS RUFUS. How else do you explain starting the most important album of your career with a 6 minute pseudo-classical drone of ...
Stereophonics: Language. Sex. Violence. Other?
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 17 March 2005
KELLY JONES HOLDS A GRUDGE — cross him in any which way and he'll take revenge in the best manner he knows; through the power ...
Maximo Park: A Certain Trigger
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 11 May 2005
MAXIMO PARK are kinda cool, but also kinda weird. They're a punk band in the modern style but they're on Warp records, which sends you ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 11 May 2005
TO BE HONEST, I've been considering giving up writing about music. Someone told me it was as useful as dancing about architecture — I told ...
Oasis: Don't Believe The Truth
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 31 May 2005
IT SEEMS TO BE that the ever-cyclical, ever-fickle music press is at that point in its orbit where Oasis are deemed cool again. People are ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 17 August 2005
GAZ COOMBES HAS HAD AN INFERIORITY COMPLEX ever since 'Alright' was an enormous pop hit ten years ago; he's spent the intervening decade trying to ...
The Boo Radleys: Find The Way Out
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 8 September 2005
OH THE BOO RADLEYS. Sadly it appears that they have now been dealt a shite hand by history and will be forever known by most ...
Boards Of Canada: The Campfire Headphase
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 19 October 2005
ROLAND BARTHES would tell you that myth is a powerful thing, that it perpetuates itself, that it doesn't need to be created, just allowed room ...
Sugababes: Taller In More Ways
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 20 October 2005
POP ACTS AREN'T SUPPOSED to release four albums, aren't supposed to have careers; they're meant to emerge quickly, define a brief era, and be seen ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 8 November 2005
KATE BUSH HAS BEEN CHANGING the world since before I was born. I am now 26 and Kate is comfortably in her 40s; logic, sense ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 30 November 2005
FIRST UP, 'Switch It On' is a fabulous schizophrenia, single of the year, 'Footloose' by way of Bo Diddley, Basement Jaxx, 'Living In Another World' ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 27 March 2006
YEAH, I KNOW I'M BIASED. But any "critic" who claims to have some kind of objectivity when reviewing a record is lying anyway — the ...
Retrospective by Nick Southall, Stylus, 12 September 2006
For better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old ...
Bloc Party: A Weekend in the City
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 5 February 2007
BLOC PARTY HAVE TROTTED OUT the usual "taller, wider, deeper" clichés that follow a critically salivated-upon debut, but what do those words actually mean? The ...
Patrick Wolf: The Magic Position
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 26 February 2007
THE ESSENCE OF PATRICK WOLF is captured for a fleeting moment during 'Accident & Emergency'. Amidst the lolloping electronic beats, dancefloor anthemics, stereoscoping brass, and ...
The Boo Radleys: The Best Of The Boo Radleys
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 13 June 2007
THERE'S A SERIOUS SENSE of déjà vu accompanying this fifteen-track, hour-long Best of the Boo Radleys compilation, coming as it does less than two years ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 2 July 2007
EX-SUGABABES are in danger of becoming as plentiful as ex-members of the Fall, but Siobhan Donaghy, the waif-like, flame-haired original member of the sassy trio, ...
Two Lone Swordsmen: Wrong Meeting II
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 5 July 2007
MUSICIANS TAKE FAR TOO MUCH TIME between releases. Sure, prolonged touring / promotional schedules and the relentless search for perfection would be valid reasons for ...
New Young Pony Club: Fantastic Playroom
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 19 July 2007
DESPITE ALL the massed proclamations of New Young Pony Club's verve, charisma, and cool, on record they sound bored, listless, and uninterested. It's a studied ...
Wilderness Survival: We Were 21 In '03
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 16 August 2007
WE WERE 21 IN '03 is San Diego-based indie band Wilderness Survival's third album in as many years, and at 50 minutes is also their ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 21 August 2007
TAKEN AT FACE VALUE, 20-year-old popstrel du jour Kate Nash is the Lily Allen it's OK to like — if you need a shot of ...
Super Furry Animals: Hey Venus!
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 24 August 2007
WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS I've always liked the idea of Super Furry Animals more than the reality; some of the early, drug-happy eclecticism seemed perhaps ...
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 19 September 2007
SOME PEOPLE MAY MOURN the passing of Zach Condon's cottage-industry approach and makeshift binary orkestra, the occasionally cacophonous delivery and earnestly clamoring, lo-fi arrangements that ...
Underworld: Oblivion With Bells
Review by Nick Southall, Stylus, 12 October 2007
HOW THE HELL do Underworld still exist? Just past a decade from their cultural peak of the twin bombshells of Second Toughest in the Infants ...
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