pop
Album: First Aid Kit - PalominoFriday, 04 November 2022First Aid Kit have grown up and moved on. So says the cheerful conglomeration of lockdown-emergent pop sounds that makes up their fifth studio album.The record has the movement of a road trip around the USA with kitschy Americana, echoes of... Read more... |
Machine Gun Kelly, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - fire and fury from pop punk convertMonday, 10 October 2022If ever a moment summed up the spirit of a gig perfectly, then it is the segment in this arena showcase where Machine Gun Kelly is confronted by the internet, represented by what appears to be a blow up statue with a monitor for a head. As it... Read more... |
Album: Brian Eno - ForeverandevernomoreSaturday, 08 October 2022“Our only hope of saving our planet is if we begin to have different feelings about it,” Brian Eno writes in introduction to his new album in five years, Foreverandevernomore (the first featuring his own vocals since 2005’s Another Day on Earth). “... Read more... |
Album: Broken Bells - Into the BlueThursday, 06 October 2022Not content with having released one of the best hip-hop albums in recent memory (Cheat Codes, alongside Black Thought), producer Brian Burton has rekindled his partnership with The Shins’ James Mercer for the first Broken Bells album in almost a... Read more... |
The Big Moon, Oran Mor, Glasgow review - partying prevails despite band's bad luckMonday, 26 September 2022Presumably before setting out on their current tour the Big Moon smashed a few mirrors, walked under some ladders and crossed the paths of numerous black cats. Not only is this jaunt over two years in the making, endlessly postponed for the usual... Read more... |
Album: Blackpink - Born PinkSaturday, 17 September 2022This album – and its already multi-100 million stream single “Pink Venom” – starts off with a twang of Korean traditional instruments, a background chant of “blaaaackpink”, a monumentally crunching hip hop beat and – OH DEAR GOD ARE THEY DOING... Read more... |
Album: Tom Chaplin - MidpointThursday, 01 September 2022Travis, Coldplay, Haven, Elbow, Snow Patrol, Aqualung, Embrace, Starsailor, Turin Brakes, Athlete, Elbow, Doves… and of course Keane. The turn of the millennium deluge of sincere young men opening up their feelings to the world, their voices... Read more... |
Album: Two Door Cinema Club - Keep On SmilingWednesday, 31 August 2022Three and a half years on from 2019’s False Alarm, Keep On Smiling comes album number five from Northern Ireland trio, Two Door Cinema Club. Known for having more bounce to the ounce than your average band, their brand of guitar-flecked electro pop... Read more... |
Coldplay, Hampden Park, Glasgow review - a pop spectacle for all agesThursday, 25 August 2022It is a testament to Coldplay’s capacity for reinvention that a good portion of this stadium crowd were not even born when the band first broke through over two decades ago. Such an age range in the audience clearly caught the eye of Chris Martin,... Read more... |
Album: Hot Chip - Freakout/ReleaseWednesday, 17 August 2022You know those people who claim to literally only like the very first music a band does at the start of their career, then kind “Meh” decades-worth of solid later stuff? Ridiculous, right?That’s me and Hot Chip. 16 years ago I fell in love with “... Read more... |
Album: Beyoncé - RenaissanceMonday, 01 August 2022There’s polarising discourse and there’s polarising discourse, and then there’s Beyoncé discourse. On the one hand, there’s “the Bey Hive”: the very model of a furious modern fandom who will boost her and monster her critics at a microsecond’s... Read more... |
Album: The Kooks - 10 Tracks to Echo in the DarkWednesday, 27 July 2022From Brighton to Berlin with the Brit School alums, who formed 20 years ago – allegedly out shopping in Primark. Virgin signed them three months later. What started as “a joke” has endured through five albums – and here comes their sixth, 10 Tracks... Read more... |