New music
Album: Marina Allen - Eight Pointed StarSaturday, 01 June 2024
While some tracks on Marina Allen’s third album are country accented and a pedal steel is used a few times, it’s impossible to categorise Eight Pointed Star as Americana. Its sixth track, “Easy”, has the closeted atmosphere of The Velvet Underground... Read more... |
Album: Becky Hill - Believe Me Now?Friday, 31 May 2024
There’s a whole generation of singers who’ve risen to considerable fame on the back of the return of home-grown commercial dance music to the charts since the early 2010s. Various Jesses and Ellas, Nathans and Calums have flooded daytime radio with... Read more... |
Beth Gibbons, Salle Pleyel, Paris review - a triumph of intimacyThursday, 30 May 2024
Beth Gibbons, once the voice of Portishead, and later a wonderful solo singer and songwriter, hasn’t been on stage for a long while. She makes the most of a paradoxical yet magical mix of being at once fleeting and totally present.Something of Miles... Read more... |
Album: Richard Hawley - In This City They Call You LoveThursday, 30 May 2024
Hot on the heels of his Olivier Award-winning musical Standing at the Sky's Edge, comes In This City They Call You Love, the 10th solo album from Richard Hawley, proud son of Sheffield, and it’s a peach. With echoes of early Elvis (the... Read more... |
The Lovely Eggs, XOYO, Birmingham review - Lancashire duo brings the Bank Holiday to a speedy endWednesday, 29 May 2024
When the Lovely Eggs’ married duo of Holly Ross and David Blackwell took to the stage at the recently rebranded XOYO in Birmingham on Bank Holiday Monday, they looked like they should be playing for two completely separate bands. She was looking... Read more... |
Album: Bat For Lashes - The Dream of DelphiWednesday, 29 May 2024
Natasha Khan’s musical career has always explored the artier end of pop. Her latest album, her sixth and first in five years, is more akin to the soundtrack work she did with Swiss composer Dominik Scherrer on BBC spook-thriller Requiem in 2018 than... Read more... |
Travels Over Feeling: The Music of Arthur Russell, Barbican review - a sublime evening undercut by tonal shiftsMonday, 27 May 2024
Last night’s Travels Over Feeling: The Music of Arthur Russell (a concert in part accompanying the recent publication of a book about his life by Richard King) was a brilliant way to honour the legacy of a fascinating, challenging, and sublime... Read more... |
Album: Richard Thompson - Ship to ShoreMonday, 27 May 2024
Any Richard Thompson appearance comes with a hallmark guaranteeing quality produce – be that an album or a stage show. Indeed, Thompson's 75th birthday concert will land on 8 June at the Royal Albert Hall, with a dazzling range of musical... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Jon Savage's The Secret Public - How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop CultureSunday, 26 May 2024
Jon Savage's The Secret Public How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture 1955-1979 accompanies the titular author/historian/journalist’s book of almost the same name. The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) and... Read more... |
Album: Jihye Lee Orchestra - Infinite ConnectionsSaturday, 25 May 2024
Brooklyn-based composer and bandleader Jihye Lee’s story really does take quite some telling. Having been an indie pop singer in her native Korea, she enrolled in 2011 as a Vocal Studies student at Berklee in Boston, also hoping to develop her... Read more... |
Album: Twenty One Pilots - ClancyFriday, 24 May 2024
If there is one positive of the past decade, it must be the growing openness with mental health and wellbeing. Whether in the films we watch or music we listen to, there is much less of a stigma in addressing anxiety, depression, and mental health... Read more... |
Album: Isobel Campbell - Bow to LoveThursday, 23 May 2024
Isobel Campbell has maintained a consistent career on the fringes of popular music for three decades. She's made a home in the area where indie, folk, rock and BBC 6Music merge. Aside from her 1990s involvement with Belle and Sebastian, she’s best-... Read more... |
