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'Fevereaten' sees gothic punk-metallers Witch Fever revel in atmospheric paganist ragingSaturday, 25 October 2025
Witch Fever are a rising three-piece, originally formed in Manchester. Their debut album, 2022’s Congregation, was a raw, sludge-punk howl that represented singer Amy Walpole’s livid rejection of the stridently patriarchal Charismatic Church of her... Read more... |
The Last Dinner Party's 'From the Pyre' is as enjoyable as it is over-the-topThursday, 16 October 2025
Before we get into it, reader, can you accept that The Last Dinner Party are a band born of privilege and high academic study? Of poshness, classical composition, private education, master’s degrees in music? No? Might as well stop reading then.... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 92: Marianne Faithful, Crayola Lectern, UK Subs, Black Lips, Stax, Dennis Bovell and moreMonday, 08 September 2025
VINYL OF THE MONTHBlack Lips Season of the Peach (Fire)Some of the many releases by don’t-give-a-damn southern US rockers Black Lips are of variable quality. They’re actual rockers, not Modern Music BA university graduates, so it depends where their... Read more... |
Blondshell, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow review - woozy rock with an air of nonchalanceMonday, 08 September 2025
There is such nonchalance with Sabrina Teitelbaum that even her appeals to the crowd appeared laid-back. At points during her set the Los Angeles singer would slowly raise an arm, in the time-honoured tradition of a musician demanding noise, but in... Read more... |
Mogwai / Lankum, South Facing Festival review - rich atmospheres in a south London fieldSaturday, 09 August 2025
Running as part of the South Facing Festival in Crystal Palace Bowl, Thursday’s headliners, Mogwai, and their friends across the water, Lankum, were an excellent pairing, both atmospheric, wonderful musicians whose instrumental (and vocal, in the... Read more... |
Album: Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love YouThursday, 07 August 2025
This is a weird one: I do try and stay on top of pop culture, but for several years, Ethel Cain completely passed me by. You’d think I would have noticed a gothic bisexual Baptist trans woman achieving great enough success to be championed by Barack... Read more... |
Album: Mansur Brown - RihlaSaturday, 02 August 2025
I like to think I’m open to most things, but even so I never thought that I’d be getting an education in prog metal in the summer of 2025. Let alone that it would be from groovy young Brit jazz players. But so it goes. Last week I interviewed the... Read more... |
S/HE IS STILL HER/E - The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary review - a shapeshifting open window onto a counter-cultural radicalWednesday, 16 July 2025
“I like guns. At school we had to fight with guns in the army cadets. I’m actually a first-class sniper. I could shoot people from half a mile away.”So says Gen, AKA Genesis P Orridge, AKA Neil Megson, in David Charles Rodrigues’s intimate portrait... Read more... |
Album: Wet Leg - moisturizerSaturday, 12 July 2025
War, pestilence, famine, death. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of them all. So what better time to visit the genuinely sunny uplands – the long-anticipated second album from Wet Leg.My, those seemingly demure, Amish-styled girls have... Read more... |
Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful SymmetryThursday, 10 July 2025
I met Mark Stewart once. It was on a platform at Clapham Junction, I wouldn’t normally approach a famous person like that, but I felt I had to pay my respects. It turned out he was getting on my train – going down to Dorset to “visit his old Ma” –... Read more... |
Album: Mocky - Music Will Explain (Choir Music Vol. 1)Wednesday, 02 July 2025
Dominic “Mocky” Salole has had a long career in which the tension between authenticity and pastiche has been a constant. Toronto-born, of English and Yemeni heritage, he came of musical age in the Bohemian hotbed of 1990s Berlin with a close-knit... Read more... |
Album: Lorde - VirginThursday, 26 June 2025
Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose production of Melodrama was a linear progression, but then came the acoustic... Read more... |
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