pop music
Kieron Tyler
“During 1975, 1976 and the first half of 1977 punk was the future but, after the highpoint of ‘God Save the Queen’, London punk already seemed spent. By the time that the Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ was tumbling out of the charts in early September, there had been two huge hits that changed the way I heard music. Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and ‘Magic Fly’ by Space made it clear: electronics were the future. And it didn’t matter whether it was post-punk or the despised disco.”So begins the titular writer’s essay accompanying Do You Have The Force? (Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kali Uchis is a superstar in the making. But she’s seemed that way for a few years and, despite making waves in the US, has not crossed over on the scale her talent deserves. Emanating a presence that’s part Gaga, part Winehouse, part Megan Thee Stallion, and part Shakira, the 26 year old American-Columbian delivered one of 2018’s finest albums, Isolation, demonstrating that sexy, chart-friendly pop could also be wildly eclectic and inventive. Her second album is more singular in focus, a Spanish language affair deep-dipped in Uchis’ uniquely woozy brand of easy listening.Uchis has worked Read more ...
Katie Colombus
For her fifth studio album, Paloma Faith decided to boldly ctrl-alt-delete the first version, and re-do it in lockdown.The new-new one is a little bath bomb of an album – it fizzes with funky pop, 80s sheen and emotional nuance than speaks of her long term relationship and being a mother to teenies (she’s currently pregnant with no. 2).If you need any further explanation about her headspace in re-versioning Infinite Things and generally how it’s been going in lockdown, fast forward to “Me Time” which practically yells about “I need some me time, figuring out who I want to be time, saying what Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Little Mix, currently at another profile peak with their TV talent show The Search, are one of the most successful female groups ever, their tours amongst the highest earning of recent times. Like a CGI-shiny Instagram-age Spice Girls, now newly signed to RCA after years on Simon Cowell's Syco label, they offer teeth-rattling sugar-pop with a girl power motif, although Confetti, as its title suggests, is even more of a frothy frolic than usual.The producer-songwriters on Little Mix’s sixth album are the cream of contemporary chart-pop back-roomers. They include MNEK, who first earned his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Following the break-up of The Jam in 1982, Mick Talbot (b 1958) was chosen by Paul Weller as his sparring partner in a new band, The Style Council. Talbot, a keyboard player from south London, had flourished amid the late-Seventies Mod revival, initially in the Merton Parkas, with his brother Danny, but also in The Chords, and even appearing on a couple of The Jam’s records.Weller’s plan was to escape the lad-friendly guitar sound of The Jam. With The Style Council, he and Talbot explored soul, funk, jazz, R&B, easy listening, and more, resulting in a golden run of Top 20 hits that lasted Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
We’re eight months into a global pandemic, and Kylie Minogue is serenading us from her kitchen. “We’re a million miles apart in a thousand ways,” she sings, feather-light vocals floating over a driving disco beat. “Can we all be as one again?”At least on first listen, Kylie’s 15th studio release - 12 tracks of giddy, gleaming, disco-pop escapism, appropriately titled DISCO - doesn’t fit the now-established mould of the lockdown album. The clue is in the sleeve notes where, for the first time, you’ll see an engineering credit on every track in the name of Minogue: the singer taught herself Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The cast list for Song Machine…, the seventh album from virtual virtuosos Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, is the size of some festival line-ups: Beck, Fatoumata Diawara, Imagination’s Leee John, Peter Hook, Robert Smith, Slaves, Slowthai, St Vincent, Joan As Police Woman, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Skepta and long-time collaborator Tony Allen are just some of the artists featured here and, while impressive, the roll call poses a question. Namely, how do you pull all those disparate voices together and end up with something that sounds coherent, composed and, well, whole?The answer Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The big news is that this is Faithless’s first album without longterm frontman Maxi Jazz. Instead, remaining members Rollo and Sister Bliss work with a cross section of vocal talent. A multi-million selling, festival-headlining act, Faithless are one of Britain’s surviving 1990s dance music juggernauts. 25 years into a career that seemed to have wound down, the absence of such a key presence could mark the final fizzle-out. Instead, All Blessed is a creative resurgence. They sound like a band reinvigorated.Cards on the table, for this writer Faithless’s initial Nineties gold run of hits was a Read more ...
joe.muggs
Today is World Mental Health Day and of course that means an awful lot of hugs and homilies, thoughts and prayers, deep-breathing exercises and it’s-good-to-talk platitudes from people speaking from positions of immense privilege – ranging from the well-meaning to outright grifters.All too rarely does any of this speak to people’s lived experience of mental suffering, and that goes double in the music world, where perpetual insecurity has increased exponentially with the collapse of the live performance industry and the future looks particularly bleak right now. One new book, however, is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title comes from the lyrics of “Andy Warhol”: track two, side two of David Bowie’s late 1971 album Hunky Dory: ”Put a peephole in my brain, Two new pence to have a go, I'd like to be a gallery, Put you all inside my show.” The new pence reference recognised Britain’s recent adoption of decimalised currency. Whatever the album’s sales on release it was only in 1972 that Bowie hit the single’s chart with “Starman”, the proof he was more than 1969’s “Space Oddity” one-hit wonder.In 1971, Marc Bolan and T.Rex were cleaning up as a singles phenomenon. “Ride a White Swan”, issued in 1970, was Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s a lot to like about Melanie Chisholm. She was always the Spice Girl who came over as most genuine and down to earth – not to mention the one who could sing. From the beginning her “Sporty Spice” image was quietly subversive, a body-positive role model well away from cliched feminine norms, something that she carries through to this day: in videos and photoshoots, though she’s clearly no stranger to stylists, personal trainers and makeup artists, she proudly looks her un-botoxed, un-fillered, un-filtered 46 years.She still comes over as a natural enthusiast, and generous to boot: her Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Alongside Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada were one of the last big acts to blossom from the 1990s boom in clubland and DJ culture. They are responsible for bona fide classics in “Superstylin’”, “At the River” and “I See You Baby”, and also founded the Lovebox Festival, which was named after their fourth album. Their last albums, the Black Light/White Light pairing, arrived a decade ago, and mined Eighties electronics to decent effect. Such biographical positivity is included to counterpoint the fact their latest album is a yacht rock horror story, possibly seeking the ears of Balearic ironists Read more ...