pop
Album: Mathieu Boogaerts - En AnglaisThursday, 18 February 2021
Mathieu Boogaerts has been recording since the mid 1990s, emerging from the nouvelle chanson scene in Paris, a chansonnier who’s performed at the likes of Cafe Oto over here, while establishing himself as a star turn on the Tôt ou Tard label in... Read more... |
Album: Sia - MusicFriday, 12 February 2021
It’s difficult to know where to start with Sia’s Music. The album is billed as a collection of songs “from and inspired by” the film of the same name – so not a soundtrack, except for when it is. It tracks range from candy coated to overly... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Laura Marling - Song for Our DaughterWednesday, 30 December 2020
Dropped a month into the year’s first lockdown, Laura Marling’s seventh album landed like a soothing tonic to an odd and chaotic time. The stripped back production had an air of loneliness, yet the vocals were effervescent and soothing. The... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: bdrmm - BedroomSaturday, 26 December 2020
It’s become something of an end-of-year list cliché to say that 2020 has been a great year for music despite being a catastrophic shitstorm when judged by any other metric you care to mention.“Ah!” says 2020, “but clichés are clichés because they’re... Read more... |
Album: Gary Barlow - Music Played By HumansThursday, 26 November 2020
Gary Barlow’s Music Played By Humans is, in all but name, a Christmas album. Mixing big-band jazz, Latin and pop, it’s an assortment box of bubbly, broad-based business bangers deployed by the Take That veteran with help from a host of showbiz pals... Read more... |
Album: Paloma Faith - Infinite ThingsWednesday, 11 November 2020
For her fifth studio album, Paloma Faith decided to boldly ctrl-alt-delete the first version, and re-do it in lockdown.The new-new one is a little bath bomb of an album – it fizzes with funky pop, 80s sheen and emotional nuance than speaks of her... Read more... |
Album: Sam Smith - Love GoesFriday, 30 October 2020
Sam Smith’s third album is kind of perfect for a miserable autumn amidst a global pandemic. It’s reflective, it’s morose and it attempts disco-fun but can’t quite muster the energy to get its heels on.Love Goes was supposed to be released six months... Read more... |
Album: Gorillaz - Song Machine: Season One - Strange TimezSaturday, 24 October 2020
The cast list for Song Machine…, the seventh album from virtual virtuosos Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, is the size of some festival line-ups: Beck, Fatoumata Diawara, Imagination’s Leee John, Peter Hook, Robert Smith, Slaves, Slowthai, St... Read more... |
Album: Emmy the Great - April / 月音Thursday, 08 October 2020
Emma-Lee Moss has a lovely voice. It conveys an ache, a longing, but is sweet too, and well-mannered. Combine this with an aptitude for literate, thought-provoking lyrics and hooky songs, and Emmy the Great is quite the package. It’s a mystery, then... Read more... |
Album: Melanie C - Melanie CWednesday, 30 September 2020
There’s a lot to like about Melanie Chisholm. She was always the Spice Girl who came over as most genuine and down to earth – not to mention the one who could sing. From the beginning her “Sporty Spice” image was quietly subversive, a body-positive... Read more... |
Album: Rui Ho - Lov3 & L1ghtFriday, 04 September 2020
A new and very strange kind of pop music has bubbled up over the past half-decade plus. It’s internationalist, rooted in both underground electronics and the most populist styles, bound up with playful but sometimes terrifying ultra high definition... Read more... |
Ellie Goulding, V&A online review - cautious liberationFriday, 28 August 2020
Ellie Goulding steps coolly out of the Medieval and Renaissance gallery, in amongst monster-slaying Greek statuary, where a string section waits. Deprived of audiences for now, she has opted for an elegantly filmed showcase at the Victoria &... Read more... |
