mon 29/09/2025

New Music Reviews

Teenage Fanclub, Union Chapel review - pushing forward with gusto

Kieron Tyler

Teenage Fanclub open their set with “Home”, the first single from their last album Endless Arcade. It’s followed by the title track, “Endless Arcade”. The first was written by Norman Blake, the second by Raymond McGinley – the album’s sole songwriters.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Saturno 2000 - La Rebajada de Los Sonideros 1962-1983

Kieron Tyler

What’s in the groove isn’t necessarily the end of the story. Sound is fixed into a record when it’s pressed. Get it revolving on a turntable, dump the needle onto it and what’s heard is what’s intended to be heard. It’s fixed. Nonetheless, DJs realised a record can be part of the route to something else, something which becomes their creation.

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Goldfrapp, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - crowd-pleasing nostalgia for the fans

Guy Oddy

Felt Mountain is not one of Goldfrapp’s most dynamic albums. So, what better venue to stop off in Birmingham to celebrate 20 years since its release than the iconic all-seater Symphony Hall? This the venue, after all, that is renowned for some of the best acoustics in the whole of Europe.

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The Mission, Chalk, Brighton review - the hits, delivered straight, to an enthused crowd

Thomas H Green

“Play something we can dance to,” heckles a fan. “Fuck off, we are not a dance band,” fires back Wayne Hussey, leader of The Mission. He’s right. They’re not. But still there is dancing.

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Music Reissues Weekly: My World Fell Down - The John Carter Story

Kieron Tyler

Fat Man’s Music Festival. The Haystack. Red Line Explosion. Stormy Petrel. Butterwick. Sweet Chariot. Names which don't immediately spring to mind.

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Mdou Moctar, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review - Tuareg rock’n’rollers have their audience entranced

Guy Oddy

It doesn’t happen very often that I find myself experiencing a performance of music that I don’t really know, sung in a language that I don’t speak – and completely entranced by what’s going on. But prior to this week, Mdou Moctar was a bit of an unknown quantity to me.

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10cc, London Palladium review - still firing rubber bullets 50 years on

Jasper Rees

What a remarkable band 10cc were. For most of the 1970s they made highly unusual pop that careered without a care between bubblegum and prog. Their ease migrating across style lines from Pythonesque japes to dense seriosity lay in the personnel: four bandleaders who all brought a sensibility to a democratic collective.

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Killing Joke, O2 Institute, Birmingham review – post-punk titans blow the roof off

Guy Oddy

It’s said that even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. While Killing Joke are by no means a stopped clock, it feels that the time is again ripe for their politics-heavy brand of muscular post-punk.

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Music Reissues Weekly: The Prefects - Live At The Festival Suite 1978, Un-Scene! Post Punk Birmingham 1978-1982

Kieron Tyler

It was going to be great. Birmingham’s Digbeth Rag Market was hosting 1977’s highest-profile punk festival on 17 July. The Clash were headlining. Also billed were The Heartbreakers, Rich Kids, The Saints, Shagnasty, Stinky Toys, Subway Sect and Tanya Hyde & the Tormentors.

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Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow review - pop songstress partying like it's 2020

Jonathan Geddes

There are few people, especially musicians, who would wish to revisit the spring and summer of 2020 with any fondness, but Sophie Ellis-Bextor might be an exception. Her kitchen discos, in which she and her husband Richard Jones, aided by their children, played a variety of covers became a lockdown source of solace and regular entertainment at a time when it was much needed.

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