David Cavanagh
David Cavanagh was born in Dublin, and grew up in Northern Ireland. During his career, he wrote for Sounds, Select (where he was also an editor), Q, Uncut, MOJO and The Independent.
Amongst his writings, he wrote a history of Creation Records, titled My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize, which was published in 2000, and book about the late DJ John Peel, Good Night and Good Riddance, published in 2015.
He died in December 2018.
70 articles
List of articles in the library
The House Of Love: The House Of Love
Review by David Cavanagh, Sounds, May 1988
IT'S ONE of those records that seem to enter your body throat first. This is not so much due to Guy Chadwick's rich pale moan, ...
The Planet Wilson: Taken For A Ride
Review by David Cavanagh, Sounds, 28 January 1989
WHEN THAT GREAT LOST BAND The Red Guitars called it a day, there was genuine sorrow that their unique sound had perished with them. ...
Elvis Costello : London Palladium - Good year for the oldies
Live Review by David Cavanagh, Sounds, 13 May 1989
SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE PALLADIUM. The "funny Nazis" from Allo Allo were taking a well-earned rest from their labours, leaving the way clear for our ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Sounds, 14 October 1989
ISN'T THE SINGLE absolutely without equal? Especially the way the "mmh yes" punctuation gets progressively more urgent as the song unwinds. There is really no ...
Mazzy Star: She Hangs Brightly
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, July 1990
MAZZY STAR is the latest project of David Roback, a seminal, limelight-shunning Los Angeles underground figure who put together the original Rain Parade in the ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, July 1990
FIVE YEARS ago, had you put the idea of a greatest hits compilation by The Bangles up for serious consideration, you'd have been whipped off ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, July 1990
MAKING A MOCKERY OF MANCHESTER WHEN THE MOCK TURTLES first peeked out of Manchester, with 1988's totally ignored Pomona EP, they were probably too busy rehearsing ...
The B-52s: Dance This Mess Around
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, August 1990
THE B-52's have had a best of on the cards ever since 'Love Shack' jitterbugged (or was it the aqua-velva?) its way up the charts ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, August 1990
PICK UP a 12-string these days and just watch those sneaky Byrds put-downs form in the corners of cynical mouths. But it's a fair point ...
The Monochrome Set: Dante's Casino
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, October 1990
WHAT A TURN UP FOR THE BOOKS. The Monochrome Set, never a band to pay any heed to the prevailing pop climate, have reformed. Now ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, November 1990
THIS ALBUM took five years to make. It sounds like it took a week and a half. How do ZZ Top do it? And, for ...
Holger Czukay: Radio Wave Surfer
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, February 1991
THE MAESTRO'S really gone on an extended lunch hour this time. Radio Wave Surfer, the latest in a sporadic series of album bulletins from rock's ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, April 1991
THIS IS an album that starts with falling rain and finishes with a 16-year-old girl tossing herself off a bridge. Welcome to a world of ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, April 1991
JACK FROST is a collaboration between two notable Australian pop classicists, former Go-Between Grant McLennan and Steve Kilbey, singer/bassist with The Church. ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, April 1991
IT'S TEMPTING to see The Godfathers' career as one delicious vicious circle. No fame means no money, and no money means no fun. The more ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, August 1991
FORGIVE THE PATRONISING TONE if you know this already, but some of the best music of the last ten years has come from New Zealand. ...
Transvision Vamp: The Little Magnets Versus The Bubble Of Babble
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, August 1991
AS THE DIFFICULT QUESTIONS mount up for Wendy James, it's a bitter irony that Truth Or Dare: In Bed With Madonna has arrived to emphasise ...
The Blue Aeroplanes: Beatsongs
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, September 1991
WHEN THE BLUE AEROPLANES were in Los Angeles earlier this year recording Beatsongs — and that's all they were doing there, let's make that quite ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, October 1991
AND GUESS WHAT: they were right. It is special. The four Blur boys have guaranteed themselves a hefty leg-up in the being-taken-seriously stakes with the thrills ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, November 1991
JIM BEATTIE'S BIG ROCK 'N' ROLL TALKING is up there with his old Primal Scream oppo Bobby Gillespie's for brass nerve and self-belief. ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, December 1991
IF STRAITJACKET FITS were English they'd be stars by now. They're a better noise guitar band than anyone In the current Anglo-scheme, barring Ride: they're ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, January 1992
CONFUSION REIGNS. What Is their trip? Achtung Baby sounds very 1991, but only as the most tangential of bulletins from four musicians who've been holed ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, February 1992
HOW ON EARTH would you explain Lush's sound to aliens from another planet? Well, realistically, of course you wouldn't. You'd run away shouting "Aliens! Aliens!" ...
James: Seven — Booth's New Gold Dream: Are James mutating into Simple Minds?
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, March 1992
OF COURSE, there's more to life than Indie music — there's getting out and meeting people: there's having money: there's not having to submit yourself ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, April 1992
WHOO-EE. Really, you shouldn't have. As a gift to the world, Going Blank Again is a fully- fledged wow, a winner, a stunna, a glory ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, June 1992
SOME DEBUT ALBUMS, of course, are more eagerly awaited than others. It would be hard to Imagine anyone chewing their nails to the quick waiting ...
Prefab Sprout: Paddy McAloon – The Mild One
Interview by David Cavanagh, Select, August 1992
WHEN EVERYBODY ELSE went for rhythm Paddy McAloon stuck with melody. He's got ten years of defiantly unrockist pop behind him and his next seven ...
The House Of Love: Babe Rainbow
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, August 1992
IT'S SOME STRANGE SECRET — probably one that only Guy Chadwick fully understands — how a band that have known such trauma and turmoil as ...
Interview by David Cavanagh, Select, September 1992
THEY'RE THE ADAM AND EVE of the New World Order, the First Couple of the rock 'n' roll underclass. For Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, September 1992
SONIC YOUTH were the progenitors of American noise nouveau. Now they're back on top of the dirt-pile. ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, September 1992
AFTER LAST YEAR'S The Real Ramona, which seemed to please everybody at least some of the time, the Muses split in half. Tanya Donelly and bassist ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, October 1992
WITH A THANK-YOU LIST that includes Les Paul. Kurt Cobain and Shonen Knife (just for being, y'know, themselves...) and a highly involved genealogy that takes ...
Report and Interview by David Cavanagh, Select, October 1992
Technicolour sensurround with a benevolent poltergeist on its shoulder. This is Spiritualized, and they call it soul music. ...
R.E.M.: Automatic For The People
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, November 1992
REM'S LATEST COLLECTION is a miraculously stripped-to-the-bone celebration of the sorrowful. It's here. It's ready. And it makes Out Of Time look like a collection of ...
Interview by David Cavanagh, Select, January 1993
PROVOCATIVE ENGLISH INDIE-NIHILISM, ANYONE? Kingmaker's American tour is dominated by Loz's one-man campaign on the "positive aspects" of topping yourself. And the rest of the ...
Bob Mould, Sugar: Sugar: Beaster
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, May 1993
PRAISE BOB! He is! He is the Messiah! Amen to Sugar's six commandments ...
That Petrol Emotion: Fireproof
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, May 1993
IN 1989 Peter Buck told Sounds That Petrol Emotion was the band he would want to be in if he wasn't already in REM. Now ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, June 1993
YOU'RE THE ONE FOR ME, PATTI... PJ Harvey's latest makes Dry (and Huggy Bear) seem like easy listening. Anguish, pain, fear, self-loathing, the horror... this'll ...
The House Of Love: Audience For The Mind
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, July 1993
THE SAGA KINKS, bizarrely even by their standards. Audience For The Mind, the official fourth House Of Love album, is upon us a mere year ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, October 1993
The Hell-Shaped Room Normal cervix will not be resumed. Phew! The speculation is over; and you thought that was difficult. Nirvana’s Albini-'recorded’ third album will ...
The Lemonheads: Lemonheads: Come On Feel The Lemonheads
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, November 1993
BEHOLD, THE SWEET TROLLEY ARRIVETH. The only problem about loving the Lemonheads is that there hasn't been enough new stuff over the last 18 months. ...
The Boo Radleys: One Step Beyond?
Interview by David Cavanagh, Select, November 1993
WHEN THEY WERE KIDS, they'd sit in their bedrooms and run through their pop-star moves: getting off aeroplanes, waving at crowds, that sort of thing. ...
Pulp: Pulpintro — The Gift Recordings
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, December 1993
15 YEARS IN THE MAKING, yet Pulp's first "proper" LP is only a bits-and-bats package. For a band that's been going for 15 years, it's strange ...
Report and Interview by David Cavanagh, Select, December 1993
"QUIET AT THE BACK! Mr Dando can sit here all day if he needs to..." Follow the increasingly knackered, confused and generally non-linear Lemonheads from ...
The Triffids: Hell of a Summer
Book Excerpt by David Cavanagh, 'Love is the Drug' (Penguin), 1994
HAILING FROM Perth, Western Australia, the five (later six)-piece Triffids lived in London for much of 1984-5 and were part of a brief musical wave ...
Interview by David Cavanagh, Select, February 1994
SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR... Last year the Auteurs missed the Top 40 by one place and had the Mercury Prize snatched from under ...
Live Review by David Cavanagh, The Independent, 27 February 1994
THE COOL ALBUM of 1993 was Björk Gudmundsdottir's prosaically titled Debut. Despite this, her entrance at the Royalty Theatre displayed uncoolness of equatorial proportions. With ...
Primal Scream: Rock'n'roll — things are what they used to be
Review and Interview by David Cavanagh, The Independent, March 1994
Primal Scream made the best record of 1991. Tomorrow they release the follow-up. David Cavanagh talks to their leader. ...
Review by David Cavanagh, The Independent, 30 April 1994
BLURRY SHADES OF SGT PEPPER AT ABOUT seven o'clock this evening, if the midweek sales pointers are correct, Blur's third album Parklife will enter the chart ...
Richard Thompson: Palladium, London — Two hours before a master
Live Review by David Cavanagh, The Independent, 14 May 1994
THE POSTCARD handed to each arriving punter at the Palladium said wistfully of Richard Thompson: "When will the world wise up to this remarkable man?" ...
Interview by David Cavanagh, MOJO, August 1994
For the High Llamas it's simple. Use a sock to muffle the bass. ...
PJ Harvey — Nemesis In A Scarlet Dress
Profile and Interview by David Cavanagh, The Independent, 25 February 1995
WHEN NOT TENDING HER CHRYSANTHEMUMS and pining for her bantams, Polly Harvey straps on a guitar and becomes the screeching, black-hearted rock phenomenon that is ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, October 1995
THE JOY OF ESSEX. The suburbs are still rotting on the sequel to Parklife. ...
R.E.M.: New Adventures In Hi-Fi
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, October 1996
GEORGIAN SPLENDOUR. After Monster's lumpy grunge, REM's tenth studio LP find them back on song. ...
Supergrass: In It For The Money
Review by David Cavanagh, Q, May 1997
THE TOP 5 SINGLE 'Going Out,' released in February 1996, made it resoundingly clear that Supergrass are much more than a three-man Britpop Playstation. While ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Q, July 1997
WITH THEIR 1.5 MILLION-SELLING 1995 ALBUM The Bends, Radiohead executed something of a perfect Yin and Yang: a great white hope and a big black ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Q, April 2001
MONKEYS ROAM THE WHITE HOUSE and sheep fry in the British countryside, so let us phrase our words carefully. The 12th R.E.M. album will not ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Uncut, January 2007
The Compleat Jimbo and co on six CDs and six DVDs… "No one here gets out alive!" ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Uncut, October 2010
Previously unreleased document of 1975 concert in its entirety. ...
Iggy Pop & James Williamson: Kill City
Review by David Cavanagh, Uncut, January 2011
The odd-one-out in the Stooges catalogue, with the duo at their lowest ebb. Remixed, it's a vital, powerful, hard-rocking listen, says David Cavanagh ...
Dave Davies, The Kinks: Dave Davies: The Dedicated Follower
Interview by David Cavanagh, Uncut, January 2012
Dave Davies swashbuckled his way through the '60s, a teenage musical revolutionary and provocative dandy about town. But in the early '70s, the Kinks guitarist ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Bad Blood Rising
Retrospective and Interview by David Cavanagh, Uncut, February 2012
AT THE DAWN of the '70s, Creedence Clearwater Revival were the biggest band in the world — a brilliant and driven hit machine with deep ...
Retrospective by David Cavanagh, Uncut, May 2012
Evil spirits. "Trotsky. Machiavelli. Sports. Astrology." Sessions with the Cramps and Tav Falco. Periods without shoes. Dishwashing and tree-climbing. And a heroic last stand against ...
The Velvet Underground & Nico – Boxset
Review by David Cavanagh, Uncut, November 2012
AN EXHAUSTIVE, ENTHRALLING BOXSET reissue of the iconic album — with rare and live cuts galore! The banana's back. Not before time. Late last year, Lou ...
Review and Interview by David Cavanagh, Uncut, March 2013
EVOLVING OUT OF informal jam sessions in late-'90s Brooklyn. Endless Boogie have no image, no Wikipedia page, no careerist long-termism. Instead they have day jobs ...
Julian Cope: Revolutionary Suicide
Review and Interview by David Cavanagh, Uncut, September 2013
ARMED WITH intellectual acumen, the arch-drude baits religion — and the Turks. ...
Morrissey: "The reports of my death have been greatly understated...".
Report by David Cavanagh, Uncut, January 2014
EVEN BY HIS STANDARDS, 2013 has been a bizarre year for noted author and sometime recording artist Steven Patrick Morrissey. After 11 months of chaos, ...
The Nice, Davy O'List: Davy O'List
Interview by David Cavanagh, Uncut, February 2014
Davy O'List was in with the in-crowd — a prog prodigy in The Nice, a founder of Roxy Music, the proud owner of Judy Garland’s ...
Dr. John: Dr John, The Night Tripper: Gris-Gris
Review by David Cavanagh, Uncut, April 2014
ROCK HAS TRADITIONALLY looked to Louisiana with an envious eye. The history. The imagery. The swamps. Songwriters who didn't know one end of an alligator ...
Review and Interview by David Cavanagh, Uncut, September 2015
WHEN MELODY MAKER'S Roy Hollingworth broke the news to his readers in 1970 that Taste, the popular Irish trio, were disbanding, his tone was one ...
back to LIBRARY
