thu 12/06/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Ready Or Not - Thom Bell's Philly Soul Arrangements & Productions

Kieron Tyler

A skim though the track listing confirms that this is no typical soul compilation. Actress and some-time pop singer Connie Stevens crops up. So does Johnny Mathis. Such seeming quirks are fitting as Thom Bell was never a typical arranger, producer or songwriter.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 59: Johnny Cash, Bananagun, Fleetwood Mac, Romare, PJ Harvey, Kamaal Williams and more

Thomas H Green

The usual summer vinyl release slump doesn’t seem to apply this year.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Be-Bop Deluxe - Axe Victim

Kieron Tyler

Bill Nelson’s views on his band Be-Bop Deluxe’s debut album are measured. In the essay accompanying its reissue, he writes “Axe Victim is one brief snapshot of a band in the process of becoming something else…a modest beginning, flawed but not without charm. And not the end of the story.

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Cara Dillon Live at Cooper Hall, YouTube review - a warm Irish welcome

Liz Thomson

Cara Dillon and Sam Lakeman were bringing it all back home when they performed their first live stream concert from Cooper Hall, in Frome, Somerset, close to were they live and where they recorded Dillon’s 2017 album, Wanderer.

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AIM Awards 2020, SBTV review - a game attempt to rewire awards ceremonies

joe Muggs

Music awards shows are a strange beast: part window display, part industry conference and part party. Especially if you don’t have Brit Awards or Mercury Prize budget to create a whizz-bang spectacle, the ceremonies can be an interminable pileup of attempts to earnestly celebrate both musicians and behind-the-scenes figures, in front of a room full of increasingly drunk and impatient people.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Dudu Phukwana and the "Spears"

Kieron Tyler

Whether explicitly or indirectly, what’s written on a master tape box can tantalise. Revealing part of a picture creates a desire to want to know more. Take the example seen above. It’s for an album by South African alto saxist Dudu Pukwana.

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Everything: The Real Thing Story, BBC Four review - brilliant but long overdue

joe Muggs

This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels.

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The Streets, EartH review - empathy in isolation

Nick Hasted

Mike Skinner got out just in time, pulling the plug on The Streets at the point of exhaustion. After Original Pirate Material’s hopeful bedroom dream of English rap came true in 2002, four further albums wearily analysed fame and self-destruction, and ended in 2011 when Skinner saw only dead ends ahead.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Shellshock Rock

Kieron Tyler

The feather in this particular cap is a DVD of director John T. Davis’ 1979 film Shellshock Rock. Filmed from October 1978 to April 1979, its 50 minutes thrillingly catch the Troubles-era Ulster getting to grips with punk rock.

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Album: Fontaines DC – A Hero's Death

Kathryn Reilly

Be careful what you wish for. Turns out the dream that most bands yearn for isn't all it's cracked up to be. Fontaines DC's debut album, Dogrel went large (and won a Mercury Prize nomination and BBC 6 Music's Album of the Year). They toured like crazy and nearly imploded. But, just a year later, they're back. And this time it's personal. The title song perhaps explains the progression "that was the year of the sneer now the real thing's here".

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