pop music
Album: CVC - Get RealThursday, 05 January 2023
CVC stands for Church Village Collective, a six-piece who hail from the countryside near Cardiff. They were the best live act I saw last year (of a long list which includes Melt Yourself Down, Paul McCartney, The Prodigy and Wet Leg). It was a... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2022: Beyoncé - RenaissanceMonday, 02 January 2023
When asked what I wanted for Christmas this year, my response was mostly that I just want to drink Baileys out of Lindt bunnies and dance in my socks in the kitchen. Y'know?More specifically though, it's Beyonce's Renaissance that I... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Best of 2022Sunday, 25 December 2022
The Beatles loomed over everything else. It wasn’t inevitable, but the arrival of the revealing Revolver box set and Peter Jackson’s compelling Get Back film confirmed that there is more to say about what’s known, and also that there are new things... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Mirage - The World Goes On Around YouSunday, 18 December 2022
Each new Beatles album offered a chance for other acts to record their own versions of songs which didn’t make it onto singles. What was on the long-player could pick up attention if it was covered. Revolver was no exception. Cliff Bennett & The... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2022: Wet Leg - Wet LegThursday, 15 December 2022
Actually, Spotify tells me the album I’ve streamed most this year is Motordrome, the third album by Danish pop star MØ. When I reviewed it back in January I was underwhelmed by its doleful moodiness, but, showing how wrong a quick couple of listens... Read more... |
Kelefa Sanneh: Major Labels review - diary of an omnivorous musicophileWednesday, 14 December 2022
Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres is American critic Kelefa Sanneh’s ambitious survey of musical history. As such, it risks remaining only a surface-level summary of the seven genres he describes. I was wrong to worry,... Read more... |
Album: Debbie Gibson - WinterliciousWednesday, 14 December 2022
Those old enough will recall Debbie Gibson as a squeaky clean, flash-in-the-pan teen pop star of the late 1980s. She was globe-trottingly huge for a couple of years – a peer of Tiffany “I Think We’re Alone Now” Darwish – but then her star waned.... Read more... |
First Aid Kit, Eventim Apollo review - joyful folk rockSunday, 11 December 2022
Growing up in Sweden, sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg developed ways of combatting the biting cold and bleak darkness of winter. As well as writing during wintertime, they turned to the open landscapes and pervasive desert heat of the USA to... Read more... |
Album: Backstreet Boys - A Very Backstreet ChristmasWednesday, 07 December 2022
Good things don’t tend to come in slews. Slews seem to be reserved, pretty much exclusively, for the bad stuff: legal issues, school shootings, Christmas albums… And so we come, with aching predictability, to this year’s festive releases.... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Love - Expressions Tell EverythingSunday, 27 November 2022
Any reminder of the greatness of Love is welcome, and Expressions Tell Everything does this in fine style. A box set, it contains eight picture-sleeve seven-inch singles, a book and a couple of postcards. It’s very stylish.The period dwelt on is... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Goin' Round In My Mind - The Merrell Fankhauser AnthologySunday, 20 November 2022
Merrell Fankhauser's first outing on record was with Californian instrumental surf band The Impacts, who issued their sole album in 1963. Thereafter, he was the prime mover in an unbroken succession of pop, psychedelic and freak-rock bands. His... Read more... |
Franz Ferdinand, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - a homecoming with all the hitsSunday, 13 November 2022
There was something devilish about Alex Kapranos at this homecoming gig, and not simply due to the blood red shirt the Franz Ferdinand frontman was wearing. Throughout the night the singer would cajole and conduct the crowd with finger-pointing... Read more... |
