Articles on music albums
Where to start?…Neil Young battling Spotify. The #Brokenrecord movement fighting streaming services’ pittance of remuneration. The airwaves filled with more and more identikit music-by-numbers. Into this battlefield strides Paul Draper with the sonic satire bomb that is Cult Leader Tactics. His first since 2017’s Spooky Action and his second full solo record since the acrimonious […] More
Blur aren’t best remembered for their self-titled album.The Britpop pioneers that dominated UK tabloids in the 1990s are better remembered today for their jaunty, spirited, and heavily London-accented songs like “Parklife” and “Girls And Boys”, as well as for their feud with fellow indie-rock juggernauts, Oasis. Despite acquiring critical acclaim at the time and breaking […] More
A new Eels album is always cause for celebration and this, their 14th, finds Eels leader Mark Oliver Everett aka E, re-teaming with writer/producer John Parish for some rock and roll fun on Extreme Witchcraft. For me, Eels have many faces. Sometimes euphoric, sometimes melancholy, sometimes with strings. But me, I like my Eels best of […] More
By 1995 Primal Scream were a joke. The poor reaction to the retro 70s rock of 1994’s Give Up But Don’t Give Out gave credence to the running gag that the Scream were just chancers.The theory went that the success of Screamadelica was due to the production by cutting edge DJs like Andrew Weatherall and mixing […] More
Lissie is an American country artist from Rock Island, Illinois. Originally performing in a three-piece band with bandmates Eric Sullivan and Lewis Keller, Lissie amicably branched out alone after moving to Iowa in 2015 from Ojai, California. Lissie has four studio albums, and released her first EP in 2009. This was closely followed by her […] More
Evolution is never more apparent than on Around the Fur by the Deftones. It could be called a coming-of-age album as the Sacramento, California quartet grew into the sound that would define their career. In addition, the music they created elevated the heavy metal genre in ways that can’t be overstated. On Around the Fur […] More
You might not have heard of The Lottery Winners, and that’s OK. Pretty soon though, if they carry on down their current path, stardom beckons. This, their sophomore effort Something To Leave the House For, brings them closer than ever to that stardom. My path to Something to Leave the House For was quite a […] More
The running theme for 2022 in music so far for me seems to be artists whom I’ve always respected, whilst conceding that their work isn’t really for me, releasing music that totally connects with me. First there was The Weeknd with his conceptual retro, synth odyssey Dawn FM, surpassing the grand, orchestral Beauty Behind the Madness and the […] More
Magnum have nothing to prove. Songwriter and guitarist Tony Clarkin with vocalist Bob Catley will have been at it for 50 years this year—with a five year gap in the middle, but impressive. They’ve had the hard-to-musically-place years, the successful years and the knowing what they’re good at years. The Early Years Those first Magnum […] More
Recently I spoke to Michael James Pollard about being discovered for his music 40 years on. It’s worth a look, Michael’s fun to read. As a precis, Michael received a call out of the blue one day from someone who had found a cassette in a charity shop. It had Michael James Pollard on it, […] More
As one of this generation’s most beloved and influential pop and R&B stars, The Weeknd has the privilege of dropping 2022’s first must-listen album with his conceptual and ethereal Dawn FM. The concept of an album as a radio-station listening experience is nothing particularly new, Vince Staples did something similar with his FM! record, but Abel Tesfaye goes […] More
24 Songs it is, then; ‘I think it would put a lot of bands off, really.’ David Gedge is right. The precision. The different writing feel. The oddness. Some bands wouldn’t take a project like 24 Songs on. But some bands aren’t The Wedding Present. And some bands are not led by David Gedge, who […] More
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