sun 17/08/2025

CDs/DVDs

Album: Emma Smith - Bitter Orange

Emma Smith, one time Puppini Sister, has established herself over the past decade or so as one of the UK’s most compelling jazz singers, now signed to hip Brooklyn label La Reserve, with Bitter Orange, a new album of classics from the Great American...

Read more...

Album: Dinosaur Pile-Up - I've Felt Better

The history of popular music is littered with bands who fulfilled everything needed to make it. Then fate kicked them in the teeth. Goofin’ good time Brit heavy rockers Dinosaur Pile-Up have had some rubbish luck.In 2019, after slogging the circuit...

Read more...

Album: Tom Grennan - Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Didn't Want To Be

Who’d have guessed that a dude who first came to attention a decade ago guesting on a cheesy Chase & Status drum & bass track would likely now be heading for his third chart-topping album? Tom Grennan’s done well.His first two albums lent...

Read more...

Album: Marissa Nadler - New Radiations

“I will fly around the world just to forget you” are the opening words of “It Hits Harder,” the first track on New Radiations. The song is about a farewell. The album ends with “Sad Satellite,” where the titular heavenly object is used as a metaphor...

Read more...

Album: Rise Against - Ricochet

Ricochet is Chicago punk veterans Rise Against’s 10th album and, unfortunately, one which suggests that despite a four-year break since Nowhere Generation, that they have hit that point where they are seriously struggling to maintain relevance. In...

Read more...

Album: Alison Goldfrapp - Flux

It’s impossible to overstate how much the early 2000s records of Goldfrapp – the duo of Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory – set the tone for the whole rest of the 21st century. The electroclash scene had already ushered in an Eternal Eighties...

Read more...

Album: The Black Keys - No Rain, No Flowers

For a band who started by entirely self-producing their own records and performing in basements, it has ended up being a long and storied career so far for The Black Keys. The blues-rock group, consisting of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, began...

Read more...

Album: Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You

This is a weird one: I do try and stay on top of pop culture, but for several years, Ethel Cain completely passed me by. You’d think I would have noticed a gothic bisexual Baptist trans woman achieving great enough success to be championed by Barack...

Read more...

Album: Black Honey - Soak

The default setting for Brighton indie quartet Black Honey is pop-grunge. There are plenty of moments during their fourth album when Nineties femme-rockers L7 spring to mind. But Black Honey also spread their wings and fly in other directions. The...

Read more...

Blu-ray: Two Way Stretch / Heavens Above!

The years between 1955’s The Ladykillers and 1964’s Dr Strangelove were the years of what Sanjeev Bhaskar recently described as "peak Sellers", a period when the great comic actor rarely seemed to put a foot wrong. Two Way Stretch and Heavens Above...

Read more...

Album: Molly Tuttle - So Long Little Miss Sunshine

Molly Tuttle is a star of the US bluegrass scene whose last couple of albums have broadened her appeal. On them she wandered into country, folk, and rock. She featured the likes of Gillian Welch, Dave Matthews and Old Crow Medicine Show, intimating...

Read more...

Album: Mansur Brown - Rihla

I like to think I’m open to most things, but even so I never thought that I’d be getting an education in prog metal in the summer of 2025. Let alone that it would be from groovy young Brit jazz players. But so it goes. Last week I interviewed the...

Read more...
Subscribe to CDs/DVDs