pop music
Guy Oddy
Neil Hannon has been recording and touring as the Divine Comedy since 1989 and has tried a fair few flavours along the way, from chamber pop to Britpop, while sounding fundamentally himself throughout. Rainy Sunday Afternoon, however, sounds like a stocktaking, a deep breath and a meditation on late middle age.Clearly not full of the hormonal rush traditionally associated with classic rock and pop, it is an album that is literate (with nods to both Patrick Shaw-Stewart and Machiavelli, among others) and mature. It is considered and unashamedly oozes a middle-class take on the passing of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sometimes, record labels don’t like what those on their roster have recorded. Such was the case with BMG Sweden and Robin Carlsson who, as Robyn, had made three albums with varying success and a raft of home-country hit singles for the label from the mid-Nineties to 2002.She decided that hers would be the reins guiding what would became her fourth album. Up to this point, the credits of her dance-pop records were littered with the names of seasoned producers. Safe hands. Odd tracks had, early on, entered the US charts but that did not translate to a sustained international breakthrough. When Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“It’s a long way up from rock bottom/There’s been times I felt I could fall further.” So runs the opening line of Ed Sheeran’s eighth studio album. It’s delivered with the quavering falsetto-voice-breaking that’s become default for sung emotion. Like much of the album, it’s a “poor me” lyric. A generation has grown up with popular music ruled by solipsistic whining, with Sheeran leading from the front. Meanwhile the world burns.Not his fault of course, the trouble we’re all in. He seems a decent man, likeable, good values. But why do so many relate to this drivel? It deflates the soul. Play Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Quite why Baxter Dury isn't already a national treasure is a mystery to me. Not for his nepo connections but for his perfectly pitched delivery and super-dry observations. He's sardonic, sleazy, sexy and has a cracking dog – what more does any man need? Maybe a bigger profile and some higher rankings in the charts...This is a very different proposition from the last album, I Thought I Was Better Than You (full disclosure, I gave it album of the year on this very site, so this was going to have to work hard to impress). The different tone is down to producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Rhianna, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM is a triple album marking the 50th anniversary of the first release on the titular label. That record was a four-track, seven-inch EP by the rough, Rolling Stones-ish pub rockers The Count Bishops. It came out in November 1975.Setting the trend for what was around the corner with punk, not only was The Count Bishops EP on an independent label it also came in a picture sleeve. The label was an outgrowth of the Rock On record stall and shop. The folks behind the imprint – Roger Armstrong, Ted Carroll and Trevor Churchill – all had backgrounds Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Although they haven’t had a hit single in almost 20 years, Faithless remain a potent commercial force, continuing to rack up festival headline sets and big-selling albums. Longterm member Maxi Jazz left the band in 2016 but Champion Sound is the first album by remaining duo Rollo and Sister Bliss since his death in 2022. It is overlong at more than 75 minutes, but its four distinct sections pass in a warm MDMA throb.The quartet of song-suites are each themed. The first, entitled Forever Free, is introduced by Jazz prior to three tracks of pulsing head-nod. “In Your Own Groove”, with its Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
International is Saint Etienne’s 13th album. It is their last. According to the promotional material, it was written while recording their last album, 2021’s I’ve Been Trying To Tell You. The trio – Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs – must have known back then they were planning to bow out.Where I’ve Been Trying To Tell You was blurred, gauzy, low to mid-tempo and impressionistic, its counterpart is often up-tempo and avowedly poppy. Both albums, though, are shot-through with reflectiveness and melancholy. Underlining this, Cracknell ambivalently declares “looking back I could be worse Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Outer Limits were from Leeds. Active over 1965 to 1968, the soul-tinged mod-poppers didn’t chart, but their two regular singles are now pricey collector’s items. There was also, before the orthodox 45s, a track on a Leeds University charity fund-raising single.It’s likely pop fans received their widest exposure to The Outer Limits when they were billed on a November/December 1967 package tour with big-draw acts The Amen Corner, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Move and The Pink Floyd. The Eire Apparent and The Nice were also booked. Back then, a band with The Outer Limits’ status would Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Queen of the earworm Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson has had quite the summer, capturing imaginations and sparking indignation. The brazen hussy has the audacity to wear what the hell she likes while belting out her stream of catchy country-pop, life-affirming hits. She’s in your face, unapologetic and going absolutely nowhere.Little surprise, then, that in doing so she has incurred the wrath of a multitude keyboard warriors. The BBC has had to turn off live commenting during some of her festival performances. The woman has had the temerity to not follow the narrative, and not to shape herself to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“What's the New Mary Jane” is a nursery rhyme-like song, one of John Lennon’s most peculiar offerings. It was recorded for late 1968’s double album The Beatles (i.e. the White Album) but, literally, did not make the cut. Nonetheless, John Lennon would not let it go.A year on, he moved ahead with getting “What's the New Mary Jane” onto a single. That too did not happen. The first official release came with 1996’s Beatles’ archive set Anthology 3. Now, the thoughtful and well-packaged What's The New, Mary Jane album is dedicated to multiple versions of “What's the New Mary Jane.” Nothing else. Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
You wait years for a guitar group with brothers to reunite and then two come along at once. The Maccabees return might have attracted far less attention compared to the Gallaghers hitting the road again as Oasis, but as they strolled onstage on a humid Glasgow night the ecstatic reaction from fans suggested it was a sight many had not expected to see again.There are many obvious differences too, given that the London fivesome never dented the public consciousness in the way of Manchester’s finest. And while the Oasis reunion has served up a glorifying of the Britpop era they provoked, Read more ...
joe.muggs
The more time goes by, the more it seems like Dev Hynes might be the antidote to what Guy Debord called “the society of the spectacle”. As is documented in the fantastic recent book Songs in the Key of MP3, Hynes is representative of a type of modern musician whose relationships to mainstream and underground, art and pop, just don’t make sense in the traditional “star” framework of the post rock’n’roll era. He’s defined not by having the biggest shows or iconic moments, but by his connections, his ability to cover ground, his success best defined not as a “rise” to fame but an expansion Read more ...