pop music
Jonathan Geddes
It appears Rachel Chinouriri has a good memory. “I remember you!” she yelled excitedly to one fan early on, highlighting that she currently sits in a nice position – popular enough to be playing busy shows in decently sized venues, but at a level where she can still see the eager faces looking back at her.At one point those fans all had their eyes shut, after the British-Zimbabwean singer instructed everyone to close them and imagine they were in Hereford during the pastoral strum and hum of “Pocket”, one of the night’s most laid back moments. The fact the audience agreed so quickly with Read more ...
peter.quinn
South Korean quintet TXT's latest mini-album delivers six meticulously crafted tracks that showcase the group's evolving artistry through everything from dreamy pop to reggaeton to classic R&B.With its stripped back arrangement – some ethereal guitar chords here, an unforgettably chirpy three-note descending synth riff there, plus vocal lines that flow and blend mellifluously – album opener “Heaven” delivers the mini-album's first and perhaps most memorable earworm.Lead single "Over The Moon" begins in similarly dreamy fashion, and while soulful electric piano and string pads initially Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The last we had was a bit of a flop. I own up about it, it was quite bad.” Speaking to the BBC’s Brian Matthew on 4 April 1967, Yardbirds’ frontman Keith Relf is candid about the chart fate of his band’s last single, October 1966’s “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”Hearing a major figure in British pop being so frank is made doubly surprising as “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” was an epoch-defining single, one of the earliest signals that psychedelia was looming. Despite having broken ground, Relf was speaking in terms of chart positions rather than innovation. Relatively, though, it had Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The name is so familiar it inhibits analysis. Gerry and the Pacemakers – Gerry Marsden and his band, a group with a designation pronouncing they made the pace, were with the trends. For a while, the case can be made that this is how it was. After The Beatles smashed into the charts, Gerry and the Pacemakers occupied the rung below them as the UK’s second-most commercially successful new band.Famously, and noted so often it’s a cliché, they were the first British group to score three number ones with their first three singles: "How do You do it?" "I Like it" and "You’ll Never Walk Alone." All Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The bar staff at Saint Luke’s will rarely have had an easier night than this one. Such was the youthful nature of the crowd for Isabel LaRosa that there was little for them to do, beyond handing over occasional cans of Coke.The atmosphere felt like a school disco, from constant sing-a-longs to whatever was blaring out over the PA (and a mass dance routine when Chappell Roan’s "Hot to Go" kicked in) to gaggles of arm-locked girls hurrying back and forth across the floor ahead of the main event.Predictably, there was then delirium when LaRosa herself arrived, initially barely visible through a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Undertakers were central to the Merseybeat boom. The best of what they issued on single in 1963 and 1964 captured the raw, stomping sound adored by Liverpool’s audiences. But hits were elusive and they dropped off the musical map at the end of 1964. The Beatles never forget The Undertakers though. In 1968, former Undertaker Jackie Lomax was signed to their label Apple.Tomorrow Never Comes: The NYC Sessions 1967-1968 captures a different aspect of the end game to that represented by Lomax’s solo endeavours. What’s heard are the final recordings by the rump of The Undertakers, made by a Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The years may go by and the albums might change, but there are always a few constants with Public Service Broadcasting. There is the recorded message that precedes their arrival for one, a disembodied voice booming out to inform the crowd to put their phones away and not talk loudly. It’s greeted with wild cheers and mostly adhered to, which is welcome, because this was a gig rich with visual imagery that should be absorbed rather than simply observed. The stage set-up was inspired by Ameila Earhart's cockpit, footage of the aviator flickering on screens. Earhart provides the latest Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
No film tackles the knotty topic of inherited mental illness with as much gleeful abandon as Smile. Mental health has been a popular subtext in contemporary horror for the past decade, but Parker Finn's Smile felt refreshing in how unsubtle it was. The premise was a curse that drives you mad with violent hallucinations that eventually force you to kill yourself, passing the curse on to whoever witnesses your death. But Smile didn’t become a box-office hit because of its sensitive approach to mental health, it was because its many quiet-quiet-LOUD scares were thrillingly effective and because Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHHannah Scott Absence of Doubt (Fancourt Music)Sometimes a singer comes along who’s not stylistically my thing at all, but their voice has a quality that wrenches, reaches inside, beyond usual taste judgements. For me, a good example would be Kirsty MacColl who, excepting the hits, I came to later in life. There is a similarly direct potency to the voice of Suffolk-raised, London-based singer Hannah Scott. Hers is a crystal-clear instrument, beautiful in the classical sense, words crisply enunciated, but also riven with whatever it is in her life that’s made her who she is. Read more ...
joe.muggs
This record keeps you guessing. It starts off with “Hybrid Romance”, an ambient piece that’s very pretty but has swooping glassy synths that crack and fracture and could easily be about to break into some super jagged Berlin deconstructed club music at any minute.But less than two minutes later and we’re into “Chlorine”, a song in the modern country-inflected pop style which wouldn’t sound out of place on most daytime radio channels, and you could easily imagine the Californian Ded Hyatt performing as a support act for Taylor Swift or Harry Styles.The thing is, though, “Chlorine” has lots of Read more ...
Tom Carr
From the very first chords of "Yellow" in 2000, Coldplay have been an ever present at the summit of popular music's hierarchy. Their uncanny knack of crafting sickly sweet melodies and soundscapes that dig deep and stay with you, willingly or not, has seen them through different styles in their now over 25 year long career.Having begun with a more straight-laced indie rock sound in their early days, the London quartet have shifted through modes and accents. With 2008's Viva La Vida, the group embraced a theatrical and expansive theme, while Mylo Xyloto saw the band delve into a Read more ...
joe.muggs
Dan Snaith’s career has been a joyous thing to watch. Almost a quarter of a century the Canadian started out as Manitoba (soon renamed to Caribou) making a giddy mixture of dreamy ‘60s psychedelic pop, glitchy electronica and then cutting-edge dance music.Since then, much like his friend and contemporary Kieran “Four Tet” Hebden – latterly joined on their journey by Sam “Floating Points” Shepherd – he’s refined and tightened his sound, reaching bigger and bigger crowds, while impressively retaining the same fundamental character and inspirations. This is his 11th full album – eighth as Read more ...