Whether it’s maturing or selling out, the tendency for rock bands to soften and smooth down their sound is understandable and, for fans, usually dispiriting – edge, purity, and strangeness evaporate as the dollars roll in. With their fourth album Romance, Fontaines DC have not only pulled away from their mordant, Dublin-dank post-punk toward a heady melange of rap, shoegaze, indie, and grunge, they've also become winningly tuneful. The miracle is that they’ve arrived at this eclectic juncture without sacrificing the danger and anxiety, as embedded in the music as in the lyrics, that Read more ...

Jon Hopkins is on a journey, and we’re fortunate that he feels he can share the trip with us. His latest offering takes the listener beyond the paths opened up in Singularity (2018) and Music for Psychedelic Therapy (2021).There's a coherence in the new album that builds on the explorations of the previous two. A reflection, no doubt, of the clarity he's feeling inside, an increased mastery of the electronic and acoustic means (from synths to strings) at his disposal and brought to the studio by his gifted collaborators, including regulars such as Leo Abrahams (guitar) and Cherif Hashizume ( Read more ...

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 ...

For a record whose subject matter involves unfaithfulness, ageing, loneliness, fear of death, darkness, sorrow, battles, haunting, sleeplessness and struggling to breathe, this is a lot of fun. But then Susanna Wallumrød has always leavened fathomless darkness with wry wit.Early on in her career she was covering songs like Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and even Kiss’s “Crazy Crazy Nights” as icy ballads, and throughout she has always had an arch cool that has allowed her to gaze into the abyss and relay what its gaze says back to her as startlingly enjoyable music.On this album, that enjoyment Read more ...

From time to time, we all come across a band name that’s new to our ears and that raises a smile and the hope of some wild and original sounds. Illuminati Hotties is such a name.However, Illuminati Hotties isn’t really a band – being the solo musical vehicle for Grammy-winning producer and engineer Sarah Tudzin. Unfortunately, Power isn’t really the home of any wild and original sounds, either. Instead, it is something of a single speed homage to the pop-grunge sound of the early 90s. At best, it digs deep in territory that has previously been mined extensively by the likes of the Lemonheads Read more ...

Named after the duo’s Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, badly damaged in a 2020 tornado and restored by them, Woodland Studios is Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ first album in four years, when All the Good Times won the Grammy for Best Folk Album. It’s their first album of all-original material since Poor David’s Almanack in 2017, and the second to be credited to them as a duo.Its mix of the very traditional-sounding and the strikingly contemporary, evident from the outset as the opener, “Empty Trainload of Sky”, pedal steel making its presence felt before the vocals enter, gives Read more ...

Trip hop is everywhere these days. From Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey on down, some of the biggest artists in the world channel a smoky, bluesy, late 90s mood – and in the UK something even more interesting is happening that taps into a longer, deeper continuum.In the burgeoning soul/jazz underground (and mainstream!) the likes of Jorja Smith, Dave Okumu, Yazmin Lacey are all tapping into a wellspring of uniquely British introspective groove that runs not just through Massive Attack and Nightmares On Wax but back through Sade, Soul II Soul to the years of lovers rock and Cymande.Squarely in Read more ...

Aside from their musical output, the fame – or notoriety – of Californian rockers Osees derives from two main factors. First, their consistently changing the spelling of their name on different releases (eg, Thee Oh Sees, OCS, etc). Second, their gushing prolificness of output. They’ve been releasing music for 21 years and Sorcs 80 is their 29th album. That’s going some.The short version of this review is that it’s a spirited electro-garage splurge but its sameyness occasionally grows annoying. Although Osees is a band it mostly represents the artistic vision of one person, frontman John Read more ...

The musical equivalent of a firework display, the third album from Norwegian art-poppers Pom Poko is bright, energised and unstoppable. It is also considered; clearly the culmination of a careful creative process. Fusing the spontaneous and the structured can be tricky, but this is what the nimble Champion accomplishes.Heard without knowing anything about Pom Poko, Champion comes across as a new wave-influenced take on math rock were those responsible cocking an ear to Imperial-era Beyoncé. Pop, but pop which has been deconstructed and then reassembled.Opening cut “Growing Story” is along the Read more ...

Discussing 1971’s The Music Lovers with writer John Baxter, director Ken Russell suggested, among other things, that “music and facts don’t mix”. They don’t always line up here, but this film does stand up as a worthy successor to the BBC’s Delius: Song of Summer and Dance of the Seven Veils, the latter deemed so offensive by the Strauss estate that it remained unseen for 50 years.There’s plenty to offend in Russell’s lurid, starrily cast Tchaikovsky biopic but its assertive audacity worked for me. Discovering the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1 upon leaving the Merchant Navy in the early Read more ...

Those with long memories will remember Sean Dickson (as Hi FI Sean is known to his Mum) as the vocalist and driving force of 80s indie guitar types the Soup Dragons, and David McAlmont from his Brit Pop era hit with Bernard Buttler, “Yes”. That all happened a long time ago but, unlike many of their contemporaries, neither of these two can be accused of being stuck in a creative rut since their glory days.Daylight is actually the duo’s second album and it couldn’t feel more different to the sounds that first brought them to public prominence. In fact, 90s house music, synth pop, gospel and Read more ...

Beatrice “beabadoobee” Laus provides strong backup for the common argument that, particularly in the mainstream, genre is no longer particularly important. From the outset, she has consistently dissolved the mainstream/indie binary, and pulled from a grab-bag of big time and obscure influences across decades while maintaining a distinct songwriting personality of her own.In this regard she resembles The 1975 (whose label she is signed to, and who have previously lent songwriting and production to her work) and Taylor Swift (who she has supported on tour), although one might argue that she’s Read more ...