CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Pop Will Eat Itself deserve to be more celebrated. The Stourbridge outfit were one of the first 1980s bands to realise the potential of smashing punky indie-rockin’ into hip hop and electronic dance.They had hits, many great songs, and covered the same territory that later gave The Prodigy mega-success (Delete Everything contains a rackety reimagining of the two groups' 1994 collaboration, "Their Law"). Unfortunately, a combination of their major label stabbing them in the back, and being perceived by some critics as cartoonishly adolescent, faded them out in the mid-Nineties. But they Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s funny: people say a lot online that what you’re allowed to like and dislike in music is bounded by age, gender and so forth. “It’s not FOR you,” they say. And in many ways, when it comes to Taylor Swift, that’s fair enough.There are certainly quite a lot too many heterosexual men in their 50s opining on her in ways that are a bit off: angry that she’s not Joni Mitchell, or that she’s a bit full of herself, or that her melodies are simple… Angry with a passion they can’t find for any other pop music. And no, sir, this music IS not for you. However, for those of us that do care about pop Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This is quite a tale: Shooter, son of Waylon Jennings, discovers a tranche of his father’s personal multitrack tapes from the analogue years, dating between 1973 – when he wrestled artistic control from RCA – and 1984, when he had quit cocaine, joined The Outlaws and digital technology took over everything.The tapes were shelved for 40 years, until Shooter took them down, opened them up and brought them to Sunset Sound in 2024. He started digging through them, and found that rather than the demos he expected, many of these "lost" recordings were fully fledged tracks waiting for an album to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The 16-minute album opener “Between the Fingers the Drops of Tomorrow's Dawn” coalesces at the 12-minute point, when clattering percussion meshes with what sounds like a sitar to fashion a hypnotic, repetitive whole. It’s as if Slovenia’s Širom have used the time so far to work themselves into a trance-like state. Iztok Koren, Ana Kravanja and Samo Kutin have surrendered to the drone.In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper is Širom’s fifth album. Not only does it bear a characteristically mysterious cover image and title, it is also long. Over 74 minutes, there are just seven Read more ...
Tom Carr
In the age of streaming, it’s never been less clear knowing when you can safely say an artist is well known in the mainstream. But for the rising star of Olivia Dean, the neo-soul Londoner, if Spotify streams count for anything then with over 20 million listeners, you could argue she is arriving on centre stage.On her debut album, 2023’s Messy, Dean provided a respectful and worthwhile offering of a vintage sound with lo-fi stylings: horn arrangements, slightly de-tuned piano chords, and soulful ballds. There was also mega-hit, “Dive”, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Doja Cat is a fascinating one-off. She’s a rap-centric Californian artist whose background dips into everything from new age philosophy to skate culture. She’s the epitome of a 2020s singer who’s as much a social media phenomenon as a pop star (and has also been featured artist on tunes by almost everyone). Unafraid of quirk and wacky throwaway humour, it’s taken her a while to convince the dubious that she’s more than an amusing flash-in-the-pan. Unfortunately, while her latest album initially contains interest, it settles to a set of samey slow-jams.The recent single “Jealous Type” is Read more ...
joe.muggs
One of the great moments of Private Eye magazine’s fustiness in recent years was putting Mariah Carey in Pseud’s Corner, for the quote about how she deals with the ageing process: “I do not acknowledge time.” That quip is of course in no way pseudo-intellectual, and in every way fabulous, as anyone with the slightest knowledge of Carey or pop culture would grasp immediately. Of any major star, she is the one who has most comfortably inhabited the diva role in the 21st century, her dry-as-a-bone “I don’t know her” put-down of Jennifer Lopez from 2003 now meme-ified into immortality as the allt Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Solar Eyes are an indie dance two-piece from Birmingham’s Hall Green. With a sound that binds together psychedelic guitars, foot stomping beats and trippy lyrics, their sophomore album Live Freaky! Die Freaky! exudes a wild-eyed exuberance that echoes the 1990s’ marrying of electronic dance music and floppy-haired indie tunes.Their opening salvo of singles may hark back to a time when indie kids finally plucked up the courage to get onto the dancefloor and shake a tailfeather, but they are tasty and engaging with a spirit of their own. “Time Waits for No One” and “Set the Night on Fire” are Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Helix” is the ninth track on portals//polarities. With this dramatic, acid house-leaning slab of shoegazing-infused electropop, Night Tapes make the case that they’re the real deal.Up to this point, their pop-inclined electronica has embraced motorik (opening track “Enter”), breakbeat-infused chillwave (“Television”), vaporous quasi-new wave pop (“Swordsman”) and trip-hop (“Babygirl (Like No1 Else”). With so much going on stylistically, it is tough getting a handle on Night Tapes.The trio are Max Doohan, Sam Richards and Iiris Vesik. Their material is jointly composed, though main vocalist Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The tour by the 81-year-old Mulatu Astatke which is currently under way and this album seem to be giving off different messages. Coming to London on 16 and 17 November, it is being marketed as a farewell. Last night's show at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels had lured a full house through being billed as “his very last concert on Belgian soil". Paris’s Salle Pleyel mentions “une grande tournée d’adieu”.And yet the video trailer for Mulatu Plays Mulatu, his first major statement since Sketches of Ethiopia from 2013, asserts directly, and this fine album absolutely Read more ...
mark.kidel
Robert Plant is magnificently well-equipped to shine as a consummate musical survivor: not only has his voice kept its magic, with a range from sensual caress to ecstatic howl, but he’s deeply rooted in timeless music, Scots-Irish and American folk as well as the country blues.These qualities were well in evidence when he exploded onto the rock scene with Led Zeppelin, a pioneer of heavy metal, whose fire was tempered by an affinity with the magical side of British folk and the melancholy beauty of the blues. His latest album, the first with Saving Grace, his regular touring band for the last Read more ...
Tom Carr
For the trio of Biffy Clyro, the years since their previous album, 2021’s The Myth Of The Happily After, have provided a valuable lesson in cherishing their achievements and close friendship. First playing together when they were 15, Simon Neil and brothers James and Ben Johnston are now seated comfortably at the top table of the UK’s modern rock scene. But, in feeling a need to rediscover themselves outside of their three piece, they took some time away, such as Neil channelling his extreme metal urges into side project Empire State Bastard for most of 2023, they then felt apprehensive about Read more ...