albums
‘I think The Kinks could have found a better frontman’: Ray Davies interviewed
‘I like your shirt today,’ Sir Ray Davies says to the waiter who brings his glass of water to the…
The best album of the year so far, by some margin
Grade: A+ While the young bands plunder the 1980s for every last gobbet of tinny synth and hi-hat, the singer-songwriters…
Musically, politically and culturally, Kanye West is uncontrollable and unignorable
Kanye West is more than halfway in to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame — if his politics don’t block the…
A Bowie tribute album: Arctic Monkey’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino reviewed
Grade: B+ Oh, terrific — a concept album about a 1970s hotel somewhere in space, plus an attack on our…
Belly, the band responsible for one of my favourite 90s songs, is back
Grade: B+ One of my favourite songs from the 1990s was about a Chinese adulteress forced to walk around town…
Kylie’s latest album is truly appalling: Golden reviewed
Grade: D– Kylie has a place in my heart for having made the second-best single to feature the chorus ‘na…
Thank you, West Midlands, for the blind alley of heavy metal – blues without rhythm, wit or soul
They’re still alive, then. Chuggedy-chug, grawk, screech screech, chuggedy-chug. First mention of demons — line one, song two. Song one…
How the Moody Blues only became good once they realised they were crap
Rarely has one irate punter so affected a band’s trajectory. Without the anger of the man who went to see…
Nils Frahm is clever with textures – but it’s the melodies which drag you in
Grade: A Here we are in that twilit zone where post-techno and post-ambient meets modern classical, a terrain that has…
Franz Ferdinand take disco and make it rather glorious: Always Ascending reviewed
Grade: A Yay, people with a modicum of wit. They come along so very rarely these days. A decade on…
Rod Liddle finds his inner SJW listening to Justin Timberlake
Grade: B– Hey, here comes Justin, the ‘President of Pop’ and ‘one of the greatest all-around entertainers in the history…
Pete Waterman on hits, HS2 and gay clubbing
One of the members of the government’s HS2 Growth Taskforce is remembering the first time he went to a gay…
If you like Schoenberg, you’ll like Björk’s Utopia
At the launch of the Christmas radio schedules last week, James Purnell, director of radio (and much more) at the…
She is a severely limited songwriter – and singer: Taylor Swift’s Reputation reviewed
Grade: D+ I was suckered in by the brio of Taylor Swift’s first big single, ‘Love Story’, despite the clunking…
St Vincent: Masseduction
Grade: A The old Tulsa sound was a rather agreeable low-key, shuffling, blues-inflected rockabilly — primarily J.J. Cale and Leon…
Sound and vision
To get a reminder of how strange the 1970s were, there’s no need to plough through lengthy social and political…
LCD Soundsystem: American Dream
Grade: B+ Number one. Everywhere, just about. You have to say that the man has a certain sureness of touch.…
Ave, Maria
Anyone who thinks that an artist’s life is irrelevant to their artistic achievement, and for that matter anyone who thinks…
The National: Sleep Well Beast
Grade: A– There are plenty of websites where fans try to discern, without any success, what in the name of…
Beth Ditto: Fake Sugar
Boy is she fat, and getting fatter. I realise this is something we’re not meant to mention when talking about…
