thu 17/07/2025

pop music

Reissue CDs Weekly: Goldie & the Gingerbreads - Thinking About The Good Times

In October 1964, New York’s Goldie & the Gingerbreads boarded the RMS Mauretania for Southampton. In the midst of the British Invasion, they were taking on the beat boom at its coal face. The Beatles, Animals, Dave Clark Five, Rolling Stones and...

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Out of the shadows: Dylan’s Eighties reappraised

Dylan’s 1980s weren’t great in terms of critical acclaim. As an emerging new fan, I knew that first hand from the scathing reviews accorded Shot of Love by the British music press when it was released in the summer of 1981, it seemed about as...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Laura Nyro - American Dreamer

“She is a 20-year-old white New Yorker who sings like a 55-year-old black lady from Mississippi. The experts say she will do for soul pop what Dylan did for folk.” Lillian Roxon’s verdict on Laura Nyro appeared in her ground-breaking 1969 book Rock...

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Album: Drake - Certified Lover Boy

Certified Lover Boy is not a mixtape, a playlist or a collection of loosies, but an Album. With a capital A. This is a distinction Drake makes when it’s time to get serious, when he wants us to sit up and listen intently. Unfortunately, Drake Albums...

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Album: The Stranglers - Dark Matters

Following the death last year from COVID-19 of keyboard player Dave Greenfield, it appears the The Stranglers’ five decade journey may finally be drawing to a close. They bucked all odds by maintaining a path after singer Hugh Cornwall left in 1990...

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Album: Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power

In an interview with Zane Lowe about her new album, Halsey said that the producers wanted to “make some really weird choices”. This was, you suspect, the intention: you don’t bring Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails onboard to produce...

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Album: Rudimental - Ground Control

To coin a cliché, the fourth album from London pop-dance success story Rudimental is a game of two halves. The first is off-putting and dull but halfway through, the band seem to wake up. There are 16 songs on the album. The eighth, “Handle My Own...

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Album: Saint Etienne - I’ve Been Trying To Tell You

Rather than being retrospective, I’ve Been Trying To Tell You is about retrospection. The distinction is crucial as Saint Etienne’s follow-up to 2017’s Home Counties arrives 30 years on – to the month – from their debut, 1991’s Foxbase Alpha. Their...

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Album: Toyah - Posh Pop

Toyah, always a one-off, has been a surprise star of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Her YouTube Sunday Lunches, kitchen-filmed cover versions with her husband, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, have been celebratory shared moments, jaunty, unlikely, silly,...

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The Beach Boys: Feel Flows - the Sunflower and Surf's Up Sessions 1969-1971

“Add some music to your day,” the Beach Boys urged in their song of the same name, from their 1970 album Sunflower. There’s far more than a day’s worth of music included on this immense five-CD package, which scrutinises the turn-of-the Seventies...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Merseybeats, The Sorrows

After a band’s back catalogue has been reissued countless times, any new release needs a fresh approach to attract attention. Archives and collections can be scoured to find previously unissued tracks. There might be otherwise unknown recordings...

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Album: Golden Child - Game Changer

This second full-length album from South Korean 10-piece Golden Child moves seamlessly from pop balladry to anthemic EDM without ever losing its footing.With ghostly, submerged bell noises, ominous-sounding low brass, joined by strings and pounding...

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