rock
Thomas H. Green
Manic Street Preachers’ earnest and literate pretentiousness is both their Achilles Heel and their superpower. Their greatest songs are amped by full investment in whatever awkward path they’ve cussedly marched down. At these times, their ever-vaunted love of fist-pumping classic rock lives up to itself.Such qualities have occasionally made them magnificent. On the other hand, when the songs can’t match the lyrical or conceptual ambitions, the whiff of bombast and stadium dirge is pungent. Critical Thinking, unfortunately, too often falls into this category.This is, says bassist-vocalist Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Cyndi Lauper was preceded onstage by a brief video that zipped through her career, which she drily declared was just in case someone was at the gig by mistake. It’s tempting to wonder what an unexpected visitor might have made of this farewell tour, given it shifted from Rabbie Burns mentions to gestures of support for the LGBT+ community, wig changes and, at one point, Lauper climbing up from a trap door wrapped in what looked like percussive body armour.It was certainly never a dull evening, right from the familiar bounce of “She Bop” to kick things off. It offered an early chance for the Read more ...
Tom Carr
You could be easily forgiven for thinking that the young indie rockers, Inhaler, would stick to the formula that has already served them so well for album number three. The Dublin lads had soared to success with their first two albums, seeing them reach the top of the UK and Ireland album charts with their 2021 debut It Won’t Always Be Like This, followed by number two on the charts with their sophomore album Cuts & Bruises in 2023.But there has been no sign of any laurel-resting, and the group return with their third album with a clear sign of willingness to both refine and expand their Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHBuñuel Mansuetude (Skin Graft/Overdrive)This is a balls-out punk rock’n’roll mess, grunge that’s eaten the hash-cake then swigged a pint of Bourbon at high speed. Buñuel is Eugene S Robinson of San Francisco noiseniks Oxbow, accompanied by a trio of Italian musicians. Across this two-record set, which comes on gatefold double on vinyl that looks like a neon green alien has thrown up breakfast, the quartet are having a ball. Robinson leads the charge, his shrieking vocals whirlpooling around a caterwauling riff assault that’s psychedelicized in the manner of bands such as Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The Lovell sisters Rebecca and Megan can be heard supporting Ringo Starr on his new album of country songs, while at the same time their seventh album hits the shelves, and with some heft and punch, too, on the raw strength of the scuzzy guitar-led opener, “Mockingbird”. As raw-edged guitar ballads with big choruses go, it’s a strong opening account for a duo who have delivered fine albums stirring together a pungent one-pot meal of Southern rock, electric blues and Americana. Their last, 2022’s Blood Harmony, won a 2024 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album (2018’s Venom & Faith Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Being unknowable has been almost as much of a preoccupation for the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman as writing songs. Previously on film he has played the role of Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, having first presented himself to the world under the alias of “Bob Dylan”.He was played by six different actors in Todd Haynes’s aptly named I’m Not There, and appeared as Jack Fate in the equally apposite Masked and Anonymous. He’s like TS Eliot’s Macavity, the Mystery Cat – “it’s useless to investigate – Macavity’s not there!”However, Dylan has been closely involved with James Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Young eldritch junkie Nick Cave would have struggled to predict his maturity as a font of wry and sacred wisdom, or the fathomless loss he reckoned with en route.Wild God followed the harrowed Skeleton Tree and grief-illumined Ghosteen, necessary steps towards the new album’s explosion of hope. The Bad Seeds returned in full, though compressed by Dave Fridmann’s controversial mix to one more forceful layer among a gospel choir, orchestra and Cave’s ecstatic voice. The sound could seem superficial at cynical first glance, the lyrics uncharacteristically rough, the whole project a bid to secure Read more ...
Tom Carr
There are some years where my pick for album of the year is obvious; something stands out so clearly amongst the crowd, something that takes a hold and doesn’t relent for a sustained length throughout the year. For me, 2024 was not one of those years.There are a few worthy contenders that came close to clinching it, each having their time dominating my Spotify listens. There’s Pearl Jam rolling back the years with their highly energetic and driven Dark Matter, a heaping dose of solid, earnest alternative-rock. Or, there’s Bring Me The Horizon and the second instalment of their Post Human Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
One of last year’s major joys was the box set version of Hawkwind's Space Ritual, an 11-disc extravaganza which made the great live album, originally issued in May 1973, even more great. Now the two studio albums which preceded it – X In Search Of Space and Doremi Fasol Latido – have become similarly packaged, though less colossal, box sets.X In Search Of Space – also known as (X) In Search Of Space – was released in October 1971. Hawkwind’s second album, it came out when the band were still an underground attraction, a band lacking traction with the mainstream music scene. They were popular Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Vanilla Fudge could provoke a strong reaction. Writing about them in 1982, Tom Hibbert – then best-known for his contributions to Smash Hits – said of their February 1968 second album, The Beat Goes On, that “on one side of the bombastic concept LP, Vanilla Fudge summed up the history of music from Mozart, through Cole Porter and Elvis, to The Beatles concluding that it was all worthless.”“On the other side,” continued Hibbert. “Fudge unleash on the unwary listener their vision of the ‘now generation,’ in the form of a dull reworking of Sonny Bono’s ‘The Beat Goes on.’ This was the recurring Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I’ve known for some time that Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom’s Never Work is my Album of the Year. This lividly witty, no-filler take-down of workplace servitude arrived on vinyl in May. The creation of two Canadian indie-folkies (from The Burning Hell), it’s my most-played album of 2024, containing my most-played songs, the title track and the poignant, “The Rich Stuff”, the latter a call to revolution themed around The Goonies.One big problem. I just discovered Never Work came out in 2020. Was it a vinyl reissue? Who knows!With its disqualification I scrabble about. A couple of monster Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s a lot of anger at algorithm-driven music discovery around – a lot of it justified, as the big platforms push the already-big acts and lowest common demoninator slop is aided in rising to the top. But we can’t talk about the topic without also acknowledging that it has provided some surprising opportunities for unorthodox music. One such is Santa Cruz, California 90s “slowcore” indie rock band Duster, who not long after they’d reformed found a two-minute sketch of theirs from 1998 called “Inside Out” going supernova on TikTok, eventually clocking up over 17 billion plays. Read more ...