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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Clockwork Radio

[#] No Man is an Island (2014)

Reviewed October 13, 2025

Sharply delivered, but kinda forgettable, landfill indie.

I did something for this CD I would not recommend those at home imitate: I bought it from a Redditor. One of my favorite subs there is the CD collector sub, due to its effective complete lack of moderation (it's nice when people can speak!), and when frontman Rich Williams advertised copies of No Man is an Island to folks there under the pretense that they were a limited run item--that you can still buy on their Bandcamp to this day, natch--I was curious to snap one up. It is a nice CD, minimalist, but comes with lyrics (good good), and he threw in a CD of one of their other EPs alongside it. Nice! How's the music? It's alright. If nothing else, it's a really solid base for a debut album...from a band who sadly now seems to be defunct.

Clockwork Radio was a Welsh (can never escape that place) turned Manchester-based band indebted to that bouncy British dance rock of the 2000s. (There's a slight tribal thing here and there, especially on the "Sambei" interludes, but it doesn't amount to much.) No Man sees them focusing their live energy to tape, which works great on the louder, catchier songs like opener "Feel it Up", "Sitting Bull", and "Rain"'s second half because the band is tight and Rich has a good voice, though not especially interesting lyrics. Outside their immediate attack, though, No Man fades from memory, especially on the saggier slower songs like "Moonstruck". More consistent songcraft and a stronger personality (or at least more of that bluesy grit towards the end) would've gone a long way, and had they stuck around, maybe we would've seen more of that.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Feel it Up", "Sitting Bull", "Rain"	"Fever"	"Moonstruck"
Download from Clockwork Radio's Bandcamp

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