CDs/DVDs
Tom Carr
It has never been an exact science understanding when something will capture lightning in a bottle and go viral. Even less expected is for an anonymous metal band to become a social media sensation, but in early 2023 that's exactly what happened for Sleep Token.The anonymous UK metal collective had been slowly cultivating their following since arriving on the scene in 2016. Their gothic stage presence and mysterious lore set them aside from their contemporaries immediately, as did their playing with various genres around a modern metal sound. And though they had achieved steady success across Read more ...
joe.muggs
I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and songwriting, and that a lot of people find his anguish cathartic, but the more he goes for it the more I switch off.Even in gentler and less rockist songs he tends to go for a keening sound that still jangles my nerves. Rather like Paul Weller (not someone I imagine he’s compared to very often) straining to express intensity seems to have become a vital part of his musical brand, but just like Weller, I infinitely prefer it when he sits back a bit and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s plenty of noise out there about 24-year-old Kentish musician Victoria Walker, AKA PinkPantheress. Since being acclaimed BBC Sound of 2022, the spotlight has been on her. She supported Halsey and Olivia Rodrigo on tour, worked with Beabadoobee, Skrillex, and K-Pop sensations Le SSerafim, and had a song on the Barbie soundtrack. It’s a lot. Perhaps, judging from this mixtape – a 20-minute filler release we might once have called an EP – she’s spreading herself too thin.The idea is that Fancy That tips its hat to millennial dance sounds and, indeed, it features Basement Jaxx’ music on “ Read more ...
graham.rickson
Eureka’s second volume of Laurel and Hardy shorts catches the pair in 1928 on the cusp of their successful transition to the sound era, two of the 10 films originally released with synchronised sound effects and music.This works especially well in We Faw Down, though having another actor dub Stan’s laugh is disconcerting. Otherwise, it’s hysterically funny, much of the material reworked five years later in Sons of the Desert, the boys digging themselves into an ever-deeper hole while lying to their improbably glamorous wives about where they spent the previous evening.There’s some dispute Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
20 years on from their first appearance on record, the seventh long-player from Canadian indie-art-rock behemoths Arcade Fire comes off the back of four consecutive UK album chart-toppers.Also lurking in the background are the 2022 sexual misconduct allegations against mainstay Win Butler. He seems to have weathered them better than most, supported by his wife and bandmate Régine Chassagne. This review is not the place for an investigative deep-dive. Make your own mind up. But Pink Elephant, especially its first half, contains some impressive songs.Working with Daniel Lanois, Butler and Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
PUP’s Who Will Look After The Dogs? is a raw and emotionally charged album that captures the band’s chaotic spirit while showing clear growth in both sound and subject matter. Across 12 tracks, the Toronto group delivers a mixture of driving punk energy, wry humour and moments of vulnerability. It is a loud and heartfelt record that might not hit the heights of their best work, but still leaves a strong and lasting impression.Lyrically, frontman Stefan Babcock leans into personal struggles with disarming honesty. Themes of isolation, self doubt and fractured relationships run through the Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Wow, can it really be 40 years since Solitude Standing, the second studio album by Suzanne Vega who put the 1980s folk revival on the map. “Fast folk” the New York scene was called, and its voices emerged from much the same Greenwich Village cafes which were the proving ground for the 1960s revival that introduced Bob Dylan to the world. Plus some newer ones, notably the Cornelia Street Café, founded in 1977 and run by a Brit named Robin Hirsch until absurd rents forced its closure just a few years ago. The album Cornelia Street: The Songwriters Exchange honoured the weekly gatherings when Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Over its crisp 32 minutes and nine songs, Altogether Stranger embraces electropop, lo-fi terrain and gothic solo contemplation. By deconstructing modern R&B, the upbeat “Come on” is as close as it gets to pop’s mainstream. The unifying factors are Lael Neale’s way with a tune – she writes a memorable song – and her penetrating yet translucent voice.The Virginia-born, now Los Angeles-resident Neale’s third album is firmly in the art pop bag. Her main instrument is the electronic Suzuki Omnichord, which can employ pre-set rhythms, be played with buttons and strummed via a touch-sensitive Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Following a tradition that reaches back to the The Who’s Tommy, bands and musicians with serious artistic ambition have created rock operas, reaching beyond the thematic explorations pioneered in concept albums a form that transcends the limits of the three minute popular song. Singer and guitarist Will Toledo, the leader of Car Seat Headrest, is the latest to throw himself into the drama and story-telling that an opera requires.It’s not clear how this would play out on stage – and to that extent, it may not strciktly speaking be an operatic work – but “The Scholars” consists of a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher; then the electronically groovy 1990s arrive; Acid Jazz Records; boss mod Eddie Piller; his collection of snappily dressed muso's who magazines wrote about and who nearly had hits. These sorts are still about, endlessly churning out music. It’s impressive. Sometimes the music is too. As with this album.Matt Deighton was in Acid Jazz outfit Mother Earth. He’s one of the aforementioned who keep on bangin’ out music. Much of it well-liked. Those mods Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Given that Prioritise Pleasure was Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (RLT) Back to Black, and that there’s been a lengthy wait for this new release, it’s no wonder that there’s so much anticipation around A Complicated Woman. Add to the mix her frankly jaw-dropping performance alongside Jake Shears in Cabaret in the West End, and you might be forgiven for expecting big changes. But Self Esteem knows a winning formula when she’s on to one. The reprise of perhaps her most popular piece, “I Do This All the Time” in the form of “I Do and I Don’t Care” begins with that same Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s always been a goofy charm about Billy Idol. As an implausibly chiselled Adonis shining out from the deliberate ugliness of the original London punk scene, he was a misfit among misfits. As a pop star through the ‘80s, he was visibly so spectacularly high almost all the time that he somehow made everything pantomime-ish around him. Latterly he’s been such a perfect encapsulation of the Brit rock star in LA archetype he could quite plausibly be starring in a Spinal Tap spinoff.Along the way, though, he’s made quite a few really great records and remained absolutely, in every possible Read more ...