pop music
Kieron Tyler
Although Dagenham’s Sean Buckley & The Breadcrumbs are less than a footnote in the story of beat boom-era Britain, appearances on archive releases have prevented their name from vanishing.In 1986 “Everybody Knows,” the B-side of their lone single, resurfaced for the first time on the pivotal Searching In The Wilderness compilation album, alongside top-drawer Dutch Sixties bands Golden Earrings, The Outsiders and Q-65, as well as crunching Swedes Namelosers. Originally issued in 1965, “Everybody Knows” stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of these hard-edged Euro nuggets.Built around a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Contrary to popular belief, not all music journalists get off on being snide about the same old easy-to-slate bands. When something like this album arrives in my review schedule, my instinct is to seek the good, to stick two fingers up to my sneering peers. Unfortunately Snow Patrol’s new album is proving a challenge. I am struggling to find the positives.But let’s try. By now, you will know the drill with Snow Patrol. Kind of early Coldplay but lathered in (even more) overwrought emotion and lighters-in-the-air effusiveness. Their songs “Run” and “Chasing Cars” are staples of stadium Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Marie Ulven had not even stepped onstage and her fans were in raptures. Such was the level of excitement for her second night in Glasgow that sing-a-longs to Chappel Roan and Sabrina Carpenter were ringing out almost as soon as support act Nieve Ella had departed.Like Carpenter, Ulven was blessed with the backing of Taylor Swift through a support slot on the Eras tour, but as a live performer there is far less pop sheen and considerably more indie dancefloor sweat to her. From the start she was sprinting about the stage or running on the spot as if limbering up for a park run, and the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The music of Brit alt-rocker Cassy Brooking, AKA Cassyette, comes from the emo school of pop-metal. Her 2021 debut single was, appropriately, called “Dear Goth”, she’s much-hyped by Kerrang, and has been tour support for both Bring Me the Horizon and My Chemical Romance. All these are apt reference points for the music on her debut album which is feisty, occasionally spicy, and – contradictorily – very precisely produced to suggest a gnarly aesthetic.The songs flip about between crunchy sampledelic wodges of metal riffage, Prodigy-ish electronic hammering, and howled, but polished vocal angst Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Rollin' Stones are probably destined to be the biggest group in the R&B scene if it continues to flourish. They aren't the jazzmen who were doing trad 18 months back and who have converted their act to keep up with the times. They are genuine R&B fanatics.”So said Record Mirror’s Norman Jopling in May 1963 of the band which soon added a “g” to become The Rolling Stones. He went on to point out that “the number of R&B clubs that have [recently] sprung up is nothing short of fantastic.”At the year’s end the R&B-smitten Jopling wrote two articles for Record Mirror, each Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The music scene on the New Jersey shore in the late Sixties and early Seventies must have been a thing of wonder, a kind of Merseymania-on-Sea. Its mix of soul, R&B and primitive rock’n’roll fuelled countless groups, not least Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and eventually Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Stevie Van Zandt was a key member of both of those outfits.While history has decreed that Springsteen’s vast shadow should eclipse everything, Bill Teck’s documentary (originally made for HBO) does a solid job of reminding us that maybe the Boss did need a little help, and he got Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Swedish-American four-piece Blues Pills are new to this writer but have been around since 2011. Their fourth album makes me wonder why.Of its 11 songs, judged purely on sheer pop-rock chops, nine have real legs. If a friend had put Birthday on and told me it had topped the charts in the US for three weeks, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. Mind you, I might also have asked if it had been a hit some time between 1977 and 1982.That’s not quite fair. Birthday has a production sheen and feel that flirts with the modern. “Top of the Sky” sounds akin to Lady Gaga doing one of her lighters-in-the-air Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In April 1985, The Damned’s Dave Vanian was speaking with Janice Long on her BBC Radio 1 show. He said “Barry Ryan and Paul Ryan have been sadly forgotten. Everyone waxes lyrical about Scott Walker which is marvellous but this is absolutely superb. There’s a tension in there, it starts off pretty but it grabs you after a while.”He was introducing Barry Ryan’s 1968 hit “Eloise,” so explosive an orchestral pop record it threatened to obliterate any record player on which it was played. The Damned duly recorded their own version and, after its January 1986 release as a single, it hit number Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Indie rock duo the Raveonettes add an ethereal touch to 10 popular songs in their latest album, made up entirely of covers. Sing…, which features renditions of tracks by Gram Parsons, the Everly Brothers, the Cramps, Buddy Holly, and the Velvet Underground, is a soothing dream pop delight.The sweetly curated track list displays the dreamy vibe of the “Love in a Trashcan” singers well. Choices including the Hollies’ “Wishing” and the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack” complement the soft 1960s feel perfectly with their innocently romantic lyrics, but the reassuring simplicity of opening track “ Read more ...
caspar.gomez
SUNDAY 30th June 2024It’s late. But not really. Not by the standards of this place. Photographer Finetime and I are in Block9 in the South-East Corner. The so-called “naughty corner”. We take turns juggernauting quomble off a pinecone. Finetime’s right eyelid is twitching. This tic developed today. Nearby is a gigantic head. About the size of a large Victorian house. It’s at an acute angle to the ground. Instead of eyes it has a kind of welders’ mask blitzing white-noise light. Like the haunted, detuned television in the 1982 film Poltergeist.We all know what happened to the little blonde Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There was a point in this stadium spectacular when P!nk gave her fans two choices. They could either “make out with their partners or go queue for a beer” she suggested, prior to one of the first slow-paced numbers of the evening, but the latter choice was a dangerous one. Few shows, even among big pop jamborees, feature as much going on as Alecia Moore’s current Summer Carnival jaunt.The stunts, choreography and pyro were relentless, to the extent that my friend pondered if every single number would feature fireworks accompanying them. It wasn’t far off that, and the overall result was an Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Unless you were around when The Beatles toured America in the mid-1960s, it’s doubtful you've heard anything like this. In 40 years of extensive gig-going, I have not. Taylor Swift has just performed “Champagne Problems” at the piano (pictured below), a song from Evermore, the second of her indie-folk flavoured COVID-era albums. There’s a rising feminine roar, Wembley Stadium on its feet, the noise grows and grows, an earthquake cacophony of women and girls screaming, so many that, combined with tens of thousands of hands clapping, it fills the head like cosmic hum. It surely cannot grow Read more ...