sun 05/01/2025

rock

Albums of the Year 2024: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild God

Young eldritch junkie Nick Cave would have struggled to predict his maturity as a font of wry and sacred wisdom, or the fathomless loss he reckoned with en route.Wild God followed the harrowed Skeleton Tree and grief-illumined Ghosteen, necessary...

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Albums of the Year 2024: Everything Everything - Mountainhead

There are some years where my pick for album of the year is obvious; something stands out so clearly amongst the crowd, something that takes a hold and doesn’t relent for a sustained length throughout the year. For me, 2024 was not one of those...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Hawkwind - X In Search Of Space, Doremi Fasol Latido

One of last year’s major joys was the box set version of Hawkwind's Space Ritual, an 11-disc extravaganza which made the great live album, originally issued in May 1973, even more great. Now the two studio albums which preceded it – X In Search Of...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Vanilla Fudge - Where Is My Mind The ATCO Recordings 1967-1969

Vanilla Fudge could provoke a strong reaction. Writing about them in 1982, Tom Hibbert – then best-known for his contributions to Smash Hits – said of their February 1968 second album, The Beat Goes On, that “on one side of the bombastic concept LP...

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Albums of the Year 2024: Amelia Coburn - Between the Moon and the Milkman

I’ve known for some time that Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom’s Never Work is my Album of the Year. This lividly witty, no-filler take-down of workplace servitude arrived on vinyl in May. The creation of two Canadian indie-folkies (from The...

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Album: Duster - In Dreams

There’s a lot of anger at algorithm-driven music discovery around – a lot of it justified, as the big platforms push the already-big acts and lowest common demoninator slop is aided in rising to the top. But we can’t talk about the topic without...

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Music Reissues Weekly: John Cale - The Academy in Peril, Paris 1919, Fear, Slow Dazzle, Helen of Troy

The return to shops of a consecutive sequence of five of John Cale's Seventies albums through different labels is undoubtedly coincidental. All have been previously reissued multiple times and none are scarce in any form. Anyone wanting any of these...

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Album: Kim Deal - Nobody Loves You More

The progress of Kim Deal has been one of the great delights of modern music. Much as one wishes Pixies well, they have never been the same without her distinctive voice and presence, whereas her other band The Breeders have only gone from strength...

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Album: Joan Armatrading - How Did This Happen and What Does It Now Mean

Hard to believe it’s coming up to 30 years since “Love and Affection” put Joan Armatrading in the top 10, a track from her third, self-titled, album which confirmed the arrival of a major talent. “Down to Zero” was another of the album’s enduring...

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English Teacher, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow review - Mercury winners step up in size with style

Props designed like flowers were scattered across the QMU stage for English Teacher's performance. A fitting choice given the Leeds group are evidently in full bloom these days, with an upgraded venue in Glasgow due to demand and, of course, a...

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Bob Dylan, Royal Albert Hall review - cracked ritual from rock elder

Will Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour ever come to an end? Two years on from the last UK tour, he’s returned, with substantially the same band, once again mostly featuring material from his brilliant album Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He’s a little...

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Rachel Chinouriri, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow review - a formidable and genre-hopping talent

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...

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