pop music
CD: Girl Ray - Earl GreyMonday, 31 July 2017
Girl Ray. Man Ray. Geddit? Earl Grey, the debut album from London female three-piece Girl Ray isn’t as freewheeling as the art of the man whose name they rework, but it is strikingly reminiscent of a particular strand of introspective 1980’s British... Read more... |
Queer as Art, BBC Two review - showbusiness and the gay revolutionSunday, 30 July 2017
Part of the BBC's Gay Britannia season, here was a programme fulfilling what it said on the tin: prominent LGBTQ (when will all these expanding acronyms cease to confuse us all) figures narrating, examining, discussing, analysing, letting it... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Marylebone Beat Girls, Milk of the TreeSunday, 30 July 2017
Between them, Marylebone Beat Girls and Milk of the Tree cover the years 1964 to 1973. Each collects tracks recorded by female singers: whether credited as solo acts, fronting a band or singer-songwriters performing self-penned material. That the... Read more... |
12 Stone Toddler, Green Door Store, Brighton review – experimentalism can still be popMonday, 24 July 2017
Ten years ago Brighton band 12 Stone Toddler burst onto the scene with two off-the-wall albums of madly inventive pop-rock. They then vamoosed back out of existence. Now they’re back, preparing a third album for the Freshly Squeezed label, and... Read more... |
CD: Lana Del Rey - Lust For LifeSunday, 23 July 2017
Lana Del Rey is hard to suss. Her cinematic plasticity is part of her appeal, yet it’s also what makes her difficult to love. One thing she cannot be accused of is laziness. For a star of her stature, she’s fairly pumping out music, with this... Read more... |
CD: Arcade Fire – Everything NowThursday, 20 July 2017
If you consider the fanciful notion that Arcade Fire are a kind of Canadian art house Dexys Midnight Runners who have substituted strained angsty soul for strained angsty rock, then the title track of their new album is their “Come On Eileen”. It’s... Read more... |
CD: The Vamps – Night and Day (Night Edition)Monday, 17 July 2017
Watching the YouTube clips that accompany the release of the Vamps’ third album, Night and Day (Night Edition), it becomes immediately apparent how keen they are to come across as a "real" band. They talk eloquently about the writing process and are... Read more... |
CD: Emma Stevens - To My RootsThursday, 13 July 2017
What’s not to like about To My Roots, the third album by singer-songwriter Emma Stevens? That’s the problem. Not just her problem, of course, but the problem with so many DIY indie artists who release albums, often crowdfunded (as this was), pick-up... Read more... |
CD: Autarkic – I Love You, Go AwayMonday, 03 July 2017
Tel Aviv producer Nadav Spiegel hadn't set out to make a full-length follow-up to last year's Can You Pass the Knife? mini-LP, but once he had a backbone of songs, events sort of got away from him. I Love You, Go Away is the result and its nine... Read more... |
CD: Calvin Harris - Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1Saturday, 01 July 2017
“You can't hate on Harris, he is summer king,” says an anti-troll post on a thread announcing the fifth album by the 6’5” Scottish super-producer known to his mum as Adam Wiles. But it would be easy to do just that. Calvin Harris is one of the key... Read more... |
CD: Beth Ditto - Fake SugarThursday, 22 June 2017
Gossip – the trio fronted by Beth Ditto from 1999 until last year – always felt a bit overshadowed by their 2006 breakthrough hit “Standing in the Way of Control”. It's understandable: it still stands up now as a bona fide banger, in original form... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Lynn CastleSunday, 18 June 2017
In a 1967 headline, The Washington Post pegged Lynn Castle as a “Shapely Blonde in Blue Jeans, Popular Barber in Hollywood”. She had attracted attention as the hairdresser of choice for The Byrds, The Monkees, Del Shannon, Sonny & Cher and... Read more... |
