New music
Album: Lambrini Girls - Who Let the Dogs OutSaturday, 11 January 2025
Phoebe Lunny and Lilly Macieira are furious. Livid with the rapist cops, sleazy men, gentrifying landlords, nepo babies and, to be fair, a significant chunk of mainstream society.The Lambrini Girls’ eminently quotable debut album, Who Let the Dogs... Read more... |
Album: Franz Ferdinand - The Human FearFriday, 10 January 2025
Travel back in time to the mid 2000s and you would be hard pressed to escape "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand on the air waves. On the radio, music channels, in discos and clubs, what felt like overnight, the track catapulted frontman Alex Kapranos... Read more... |
Album: Bridget Hayden and The Apparitions - Cold Blows The RainThursday, 09 January 2025
The title Cold Blows The Rain encapsulates it. A mournful, unembellished female voice sings of loss. The musical backing is sparse. Rhythms are measured. Nothing is hurried. If this album was a weather forecast, it would predict impenetrable mist... Read more... |
Album: Snoop Dogg - MissionaryWednesday, 08 January 2025
Sometimes magic really can’t be recreated. However hard it’s strived for. The incendiary magic that was Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg three decades ago has not been conjured again in this long-awaited reunion. There are sparks of genius, for sure, and some... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: Chihei Hatakeyama & Shun Ishiwaka - Magnificent Little Dudes Vol. 1Monday, 06 January 2025
A gem for me this year has been the collaborative project between the veteran minimalist composer Chihei Hatakeyama and jazz drummer Shun Ishiwaka, Magnificent Little Dudes Vol. 1. It’s an album I stumbled upon, not being familiar with either... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: American Baroque - Chamber Pop and Beyond 1967-1971Sunday, 05 January 2025
The descending refrain opening the song isn’t unusual but attention is instantly attracted as it’s played on a harpsichord. Equally instantly, an elegiac atmosphere is set. The voice, coming in just-short of the 10-second mark, is similarly yearning... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to EcstasyFriday, 03 January 2025
Does absolutely everything have to get more difficult with each passing year? Apparently so. The amount of time I’ve spent deciding which of the many truly excellent albums I’ve reviewed this year should get the ‘top prize’ has, frankly, been... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: Mk.gee - Two Star and the Dream PoliceThursday, 02 January 2025
Mk.gee has been an unexpected thread in a year of music that’s pulled me in many different directions, punctuating the need for unique, sonically interesting music alongside the huge pop and rock albums that we’ve also been treated to in 2024.Music... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild GodTuesday, 31 December 2024
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... Read more... |
Best of 2024: Music Reissues WeeklySunday, 29 December 2024
A reissue can be an aide-mémoire, a reminder that a record which has been off the radar for a while needs revisiting, that it deserves fresh attention.In that spirit, this column has looked at straight vinyl reissues of albums of varying styles,... Read more... |
Albums of the Year: Beth Gibbons - Lives OutgrownSaturday, 28 December 2024
Beth Gibbons’s latest album touched me more deeply than most of what I heard in 2024. She’s true to herself and honest in a way that’s extraordinarily disarming. Her vulnerability matches, in a microcosmic and yet authentic way, the unutterable pain... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department: The AnthologyFriday, 27 December 2024
From the iconic Pop anthems that dominated this Summer, to the Pop Punk resurgence that is still going strong, it’s been an exciting twelve months of new music. I haven’t struggled to choose an album of the year, but I acknowledge that my choice is... Read more... |
