electropop
Kathryn Reilly
Despite being Mercury nominated, Bazza’s hardly a household name. Nevertheless, his debut album When Will We Land was highly praised by those in the know. I am definitely not in the know and am more or less a stranger to electro stuff – it can often leave me cold (Guetta can get off, quite frankly). But I know a good tune when I hear it.His career has been short and rather stratospheric and he’s the first to admit his head’s reeling. He played his first live show at Glastonbury two years ago, then sold out three nights at Brixton Academy and will be headlining at All Points East in Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“I’m, like, pop star when I have to pop star, and then I’m, like, naked hippy when I can naked hippy.” So Kesha explained recently on the Jennifer Hudson Show, going on to say she spent most of her time romping in the woods and chasing butterflies. A far cry, then, from the trailer trash Gaga guise she adopted when she exploded in 2009 with global chart-topper “Tik Tok” (“Brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack”!). Her sixth album sees a sometimes vital, sometimes awkward collision between the above personas.Kesha has rarely been predictable – remember when she did a song with Flaming Lips – and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
German singer Claudia Brücken has had a long and busy career, initially defined by her role in Propaganda. They were a cult 1980s band on ZTT Records who laced their opulent synth pop with an appealingly morbid Teutonic sensibility. Decades later, it seemed they’d been forgotten until Brücken and fellow Propaganda singer Susanne Freytag released an album in 2022 as xPropaganda. It scooted up the UK charts. Her latest solo outing follows elegantly in its footsteps and contains good things.It's far from her first non-Propaganda material. As well as once being in long-defunct duos Act and OneTwo Read more ...
James Mellen
Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose production of Melodrama was a linear progression, but then came the acoustic guitars and organic percussion of Solar Power.Though, like Melodrama it was produced by pop powerhouse Jack Antonoff, it had the laid back vibe of an artist who’d ditched her mobile phone and got back to nature – and divided fans. Now, the DIY aesthetics and pop-up warehouse events to promote Virgin suggested it might be a Read more ...
Gary Naylor
The safe transfer of power in post-war Western democracies was once a given. The homely Pickfords Removals van outside Number Ten, a crestfallen now ex-PM and family mooching about, for once trying not to be on camera, it's a tabloid front page cliché. Or the pomp and circumstance on Capitol Hill, cold, crowded and celebratory, a rebuke to the slab-faced gerontocracy, back yet again to survey Moscow’s Red Square parade.Shakespeare knew that such displays concealed dramas both political and personal and poured that knowledge (and a whole lot more) into Hamlet, state and court disintegrating Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Marina Diamandis is a proper pop star, brilliantly full-on, off on her own thing. The Welsh singer is primarily known for success 10-15 years ago as Marina and the Diamonds, but she’s retained global heft as an album artist, including in the US, where she now lives (she played Coachella this year). Her last album was 2021’s enjoyably unfettered Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. Princess of Power is even more over-the-top, pushing sex-positive girl-power themes further. It’s a welcome counterpoint to contemporary trip-hop-ish “sad girl pop”.Marina 2025 is, perhaps, best summed up by the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ready to Live a Lie is so sonically vaporous it almost isn’t there. While the album’s 11 tracks draw from continental European musical archetypes – specifically Italian disco and Eurovision-styled balladry – there is little solidity which can be grasped. The wispy clouds in the album’s cover image are emblematic.Taken individually, tracks can be lovely: slices of glacial electro-dance, of sighing balladry. There is pulsing album opener “The Other Days”; a glistening cover of Pet Shop Boys’ “Rent”; the languid, bossa nova-infused “He's Not You”; “Guarding Shell”, with its vague intimations of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Danish singer MØ is a paradox. Initially she appeared to be another Scandi electro-pop princess of the bangers. The monster 2015 hit “Lean On” with Major Lazer jacked her profile, briefly, through the roof, but, while she’s worked with everyone from Iggy Azalea to DJ Benny Benassi, she seemed to step sideways from pure pop, tempering it with something more Nordic and melancholy. Her fourth album persuasively continues in this direction.This isn’t to say that there are no clubby stompers. Those after that pure rush should head straight to “Keep Moving”, an Eighties-tinted 4/4 cruncher, created Read more ...
peter.quinn
London's iconic Roundhouse, packed to the rafters, provided the perfect setting for the UK premiere of Louis Cole's groundbreaking album nothing – his fifth album and third on Brainfeeder. This one-night-only performance, featuring Cole on drums and keys with an orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley, delivered electrifying musicianship, fascinating stylistic mash-ups, and melodies that imprinted themselves on your consciousness.Released last August to critical adulation, nothing presented something far more ambitious than an orchestral rehash of greatest hits. The LA-based composer, multi- Read more ...
joe.muggs
I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and songwriting, and that a lot of people find his anguish cathartic, but the more he goes for it the more I switch off.Even in gentler and less rockist songs he tends to go for a keening sound that still jangles my nerves. Rather like Paul Weller (not someone I imagine he’s compared to very often) straining to express intensity seems to have become a vital part of his musical brand, but just like Weller, I infinitely prefer it when he sits back a bit and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s plenty of noise out there about 24-year-old Kentish musician Victoria Walker, AKA PinkPantheress. Since being acclaimed BBC Sound of 2022, the spotlight has been on her. She supported Halsey and Olivia Rodrigo on tour, worked with Beabadoobee, Skrillex, and K-Pop sensations Le SSerafim, and had a song on the Barbie soundtrack. It’s a lot. Perhaps, judging from this mixtape – a 20-minute filler release we might once have called an EP – she’s spreading herself too thin.The idea is that Fancy That tips its hat to millennial dance sounds and, indeed, it features Basement Jaxx’ music on “ Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Had I read the contextual blurb about Jenny Hval's latest album first, I might have assumed it was a perfume company collaboration. The album is named after a fragrance created by renowned perfumer Maurice Roucel for French house Serge Lutens, a connection that initially seems tenuous.This olfactory obsession, it turns out, developed during lockdown when Hval found that scent filled the void left by the absence of live music. It's an unusual concept for this contemplative work, yet perfectly aligned with Hval's experimental approach, which curates ethereal soundscapes, spoken word, and Read more ...