Back when One Direction alumnus Niall Horan released his second album, Heartbreak Weather, in 2020, songs such as “Nice to Meet Ya”, “Arms of a Stranger” and “Small Talk” hinted that new sonic adventures might be opening. Not in the vanguard sense of, say, St Vincent or FKA Twigs, but hints of envelope-pushing, nonetheless. These did not lead anywhere and, now up to album number four, he’s settled to a very 2026 gumbo that melds 1970s West Coast soft rock/yacht rock with a pinch of indie edge, but without the tunes to match his own poppiest (such as the contagiously joyful, if saccharine, “ Read more ...

Lizzo used to be fun. For a long time, the now 38-year-old singer-songwriter emitted a vibrant energy but that has lately seeped out of her music. This may be down to any of a litany of reasons that span her musical and personal life, but the result is the same regardless: Bitch is a deeply uninspired album.  Her lyrics, which used to be full of interesting turns of phrase, if occasionally corny or overwrought, are now flat repetitions of previous work. Proclamations of self-love on “That Grrrl” are just recycled phrases from her number one single “About Damn Time” and “Bitch” is just “ Read more ...

The concept of political rap has always been a slippery fish. Even as hip hop first hit the mainstream, there was a myth perpetuated by well-meaning cheerleaders that it was a form of protest music first and for partying second – and this is an assumption that then metastasised into received opinion among critics and rock-centric audiences that worthy, angry rap was more authentic and had more value, than anything fun. This is, of course, patronising, silly, and a false dichotomy. It’s a distortion of an entire, vast, culture which has all too often led to mediocre talents (Michael Franti), Read more ...

A new album from Evanescence doesn’t come around all that often. But when they do, they are always worth at least a pause and cursory listen: their reputation precedes them ever since their seminal hit “Bring Me To Life” first took over the airwaves in the early noughties.In the years since and across their five previous albums, their dramatic blend of modern Nu Metal stylings with symphonic melodies is an often-captivating premise that is hard to come by elsewhere. Best embodied by Amy Lee’s signature vocals and lyrics, they have an uncanny knack at tying up varied textures and influences Read more ...

Freshly-exhumed from the vaults, this latest Children's Film Foundation selection follows an established template. We get nine pacy short features taken from different eras in the CFF’s existence (in this case, between 1954 and 1980), along with a selection of choice extras. BFI producer and film historian Vic Pratt’s booklet notes are worth this set’s purchase price alone: that “CFF films were good, clean, fast-moving fun: short, sweet, high on kid-based comedy hi-jinks and straightforward adventure; low on boring grown-ups’ stuff like romance or overly complicated plots” pretty much sums up Read more ...

Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, star of The Gloaming supergroup, says of Ryan Young: “He is an up-and-coming musician who is gaining more and more well-deserved recognition. I feel that he has the potential to make a very significant contribution to the Scottish tradition.”  And beyond his carefully measured words, Hayes has gone on to produce Young’s third album, as well as play on a couple of tune sets, which means you can strike out “up and coming” and replace it with “fully arrived”. And what an album it is – the playing, the discipline, invention and feel is exemplary. Young’s Read more ...

There’s been quite a breadcrumb trail leading up to the release of Paul McCartney’s 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – a The Rest is History podcast recorded at Abbey Road, interviews galore, and the expectation of an octogenarian McCartney delving into the deeper end of his past (almost a decade after he released Memory Almost Full).Thus the Dungeon Lane of the title – a local boyhood hangout for McCartney, a kind of second-tier Penny Lane. Recorded between tours over a period of five years, the 14-song album is packed with tunes and melodies brought together in a busy rush of songs Read more ...

Admittedly, my journey into the strange world of IDM, electronica and ambient music has not been a complex one. Whilst finding Aphex Twin, Burial, Squarepusher and the other entry level artists that pioneered these genres, I more than once tried to venture further out, and stumbled across the now classic Music Has the Right to Children by Scottish duo Boards of Canada. Deep fulfilling synths, trudging rhythms and precise vocal chops and samples, the album defines what they do best, and now, 13 years since Tomorrow’s Harvest, Boards of Canada are back with the dark and twisted Read more ...

For the majority of Turnover fans, listening to Down On Earth for the first time will be a rollercoaster. The highs are moments that resemble their 2015 touchstone dream pop emo phenomenon Peripheral Vision in any way at all, and the lows are every time it veers from that in a strange, confusing, incohesive way.  That’s not to say that bands shouldn’t explore, it’s to say that Peripheral Vision is so widely regarded as a perfect album, that one will never be enough.   Although 2017’s Good Nature was a great follow up, the hope and excitement around Turnover Read more ...

This may be Willie Nelson’s 79th solo studio album, and his 156th in all, but despite such prodigious and prolific writing, the Red Headed Stranger is still a minimalist in his 93rd year. Case in point: Dream Chaser’s 10 tracks clock in at half an hour, and they’re each as astute, funny and affecting as ever. Title song and album opener “Dream Chaser” lasoos Bobby Tomberlin into the very well-oiled  Cannon-Nelson writing team, for a sweet bout of lossless reflection, while “Fly Away”, penned by Cannon and Bobby Whitlock, is a sweet, spare heart-breaker. The more intimate, Read more ...

“I tell people this is my first and last big band album,” says Helen Sung about Oracles. The Houston-born pianist received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021, and that enabled her to bring what she has called this “dream project” to fruition, to write and record a whole programme of music for big band.  The new music she says, “pays homage to the jazz masters whose music, wisdom and generosity changed my life,” and that gratitude fuels an album which is an upbeat celebration of several of the jazz luminaries whom she has known, learnt from and been inspired by.If Oracles doesn’t get a Read more ...

There must have been something in the ether. Only last month, not knowing that they had a surprise album about to drop, I namechecked “groovy Wirral millennials The Coral” in reviewing Ringo Starr’s Long, Long Road, linking them to Merseyside’s “romanticisation of the far side of the Atlantic”. And hey presto, here they are with 388, their 13th album – released without announcement initially in physical shops only – and both their grooviest and their most transatlantic-facing record in quite a while.The band have always been doused in nostalgic Americana of various kinds, of course. When they Read more ...