New music
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHJohn R Miller The Great Unknowing (Rounder)
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John R Miller’s youth was spent in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, an area where he imbibed Americana-folk fiddle music and began his career. The fiddles are mostly long gone but the feel of them is retained on The Great Unknowing, his fifth album. Miller combines raw country songwriting with a rough-edged bar-blues guitar twang. His voice is world-weary and his songwriting literate but catchy, dosed up on the blackly humorous cynicism found in the best country music Read more ...
Mark Kidel
There is a jovial intensity about the Jeremy Ledbetter Trio. As they launch vivaciously into the second set of their visit to a packed Ronnie Scott's, they clearly enjoy playing together, as the many smiles and expressions of delight they exchange on stage make blatantly clear. There is a relentlessness, though, as if they’d allowed themselves to be a little too possessed by their virtuosity and high volume.
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As Ledbetter (pictured left) makes clear in his opening intro, almost a harangue rather than something tentative, the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Comparatively speaking, Rotherham appears in the news more than most British towns of an equivalent size. And much of that news is not good. Much of it is representative of poverty, social disenfranchisement, and the ugly face of flag-waving Britain. But self-released, 2020s grass roots indie rockers The Reytons offer a reminder of working class community power, a band who hark back to the days when the only way out of big city estates was through football and pop.Their last couple of albums (of four, including this one), made it to No.1 and No.2 in the UK album charts, respectively. This Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Last night's BBC Prom was a celebration – of 40 years since the release of Paul Simon’s triumphant album Graceland in August 1986. Before long, the celebration had morphed into a dance-along, with the fully populated arena of the Royal Albert Hall bobbing and swaying, spurred into movement by the stylish choreography of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. And by the time we got to the final number in the programme, “You Can Call Me Al”, the dance-along had blossomed further into a joyous sing-along. Like all good celebrations, the reasons why or how it’s actually happening can get lost in the Read more ...
Ibi Keita
There is something quietly reassuring to me about hearing a record that knows exactly what it wants to be. Wales-born duo Overmono's latest release Pure Devotion isn't chasing reinvention or festival-sized maximalism. Instead, it leans into groove, atmosphere and immaculate production, trusting subtlety over spectacle.The opening tracks, "Lockup" and "Knight in Shining Prada", immediately set the tone. Both pulse with an unmistakable French house influence, their filtered loops, buoyant basslines and crisp drums recalling the house party fantasies of Daft Punk. It's a comparison that feels Read more ...
Camp Bestival 2026, Lulworth Castle review - where the daytime magic still outshines everything else
Katie Colombus
A few years ago, Camp Bestival felt like a charming, quietly eccentric affair, fairly small in the best sense, especially set beside the giants of the British festival calendar. Curated as ever by its founder Rob da Bank and held in the grounds of Lulworth Castle on Dorset's Jurassic Coast, it has grown into something that feels much bigger and even more beloved: a multi-award-winning family institution. But the essential character holds. This is a camping festival for extraordinary creative arts by day and a measure of hedonism by night - all done to the absolute highest standard Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s absolutely normal to expect the weird and the wonderful each time those prolific Australian psychedelicists, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard release a new album. Yet, guitars are also pretty much expected to be somewhere in the mix. Not so with Alien Metal: their 28th album in 14 years.Fuelled by Joey Walker’s recent synthesizer obsession, Alien Metal apparently evolved from an extended seamless Eurorack jam that took in techno, breakbeat, house and the electronic end of prog rock to make something that is part thumping hardcore foot-stomper and part tripped out hard-spinner. However Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
The staggering musical talent of Citizen has become more and more apparent with each album they have released, and Halcyon Blues continues the trend.This album would in fact be a perfectly acceptable place to start for anyone who is still missing out on this band. Opening track “Good Fortune” immediately invites you to sit next to them before they take you on an almost 40 minute immersive experience, offering refined but effortless elements of everything that makes them unique as the tracks go on. Mat Kerekes’ imaginative, alluring lyricism and soothing but commanding vocals lead the way Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“She said her life was like a motorway… dull, grey, and long.” The lyrics of “Like a Motorway,” from Saint Etienne’s February 1994 album Tiger Bay see the titular highway negatively, signifying a life defined by a prolonged drabness.Saint Etienne released their final album, International, last September. By that point, Bob Stanley, one third of the band, was already bedded-in as an author. He has also been behind a series of concept compilations. Rather than being devoted to a genre or style – maybe acid folk or Belgian popcorn – they aim to bring to mind a situation, a setting, particular Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The only break in the flow comes just before the last song, “Toppling.” There’s a need to tune the guitar, so what – until this point – is an uninterrupted, pell-mell rush through what seems to be seven other songs is briefly halted.“Seems to be” as it’s hard to detect when one entry in the breathless half-hour set bleeds into the next. Individually, the songs have stop-start structures, handbrake turns from one time signature to another, and sudden outbursts of noise which abruptly give way to short passages which hint at a reflectiveness. Then, boom, off into the next swirling slab of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
These days, Alfie Agnew is a Maths professor at California State University Fullerton. Back in the 1980s, however, he was singer and guitarist with US punks the Adolescents, as well as DI along with Sean Elliot. However, while academia might provide a more regular income than playing music, it clearly isn’t anything like as much fun. So, for the last decade, the pair of them have been scratching that itch in their side hustle, Professor and the Madman, along with Rat Scabies and Paul Gray of the Damned.Dreamworld is far from a group of punk veterans revisiting old glories though. In fact, its Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Since the release of her last album, Eternal Sunshine, in 2024, Ariana Grande, already a multi-platform superstar, has exploded to even greater fame, via the Wicked film franchise. Given her peaking global profile, one might have expected the 33-year-old, ex-teen TV idol to come charging out with a maximalist pop whopper in the vein of, say, Lady Gaga’s Mayhem. But, no, she’s headed to contemplative waters.Where Eternal Sunshine, a funky Dua Lipa-esque disco riff, celebrated pop, petal (sold to us in lowercase letters) has the smeary, slightly opiated-sounding production that the kids seem to Read more ...