The Listener
Dazzling: Marc-André Hamelin’s Hammerklavier
Grade: A When Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata was published in 1818, pianists were confronted with a mixture of ‘demonic energy and…
Goodbye to MC5, the holiest of rock’s holy cows
Grade: D+ Ah, the original Linkin Park, except even more spavined. MC5 came outta Detroit in the mid 1960s and…
A box set for those on the spectrum: Markus Poschner’s Bruckner Symphonies reviewed
Grade: B+ Anton Bruckner wrote 11 symphonies – Numbers One to Nine plus a student exercise and the formidable rejected…
Too bombastic to be country music: Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion reviewed
Grade: B Country music has become the acceptable route through which American pop stars resuscitate their floundering careers: sales are…
As good, and inventive, as modern rock music gets: Black Midi's Hellfire reviewed
Grade: A+ The difficult question with Black Midi was always: are you listening to them in order to admire them,…
An intense slab of religiosity: Nick Cave's Seven Psalms reviewed
Grade: B There has always been a seriousness and intelligence about Nick Cave quite at odds with that which usually…
Humour, sweetness and sincerity: Father John Misty's Chloë and the Next Twentieth Century reviewed
Grade: A– In which Josh Tillman reimagines the whole back catalogue of 20th-century American pop music (except for rock), tilting…
No one should be doing indie rock at 43: Band of Horses's Things Are Great reviewed
Grade: B That thing, ‘indie rock’, is so well played and produced these days, so pristine and flawless, that it…
See this Russian hip hop star before they arrest him: Oxxxymiron's Beauty & Ugliness reviewed
Grade: A+ I was going to review hyperpop chanteuse Charli XCX’s album this week, but it was such boring, meretricious,…
Fabulously boring: Weather Station's How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars reviewed
Grade: C– Anyone remember that TV advert for Canada from the 1980s – a succession of colourful images, including a…
Too neat but it has hooks aplenty: Avril Lavigne's Love Sux reviewed
Grade: B Yay, life just gets better and better. World War Three and now this. More petulant popcorn pre-school punk…
Pretty astonishing: Black Country, New Road's Ants From Up There reviewed
Grade: A+ It is not true, fellow boomers, that there is nothing new under the sun nor no good new…
Has the whiff of Spinal Tap: Jethro Tull's The Zealot Gene reviewed
Grade: C+ I bought the ‘seminal’ Jethro Tull double album Thick as a Brickfrom a secondhand shop when I…
Lovely and wistful: Neil Young and Crazy Horse's Barn reviewed
Grade: A I have persisted in buying everything Neil Young releases since I first heard On the Beach as a…
Truly godawful: Ed Sheeran's = (Christmas edition)
Grade: C= My wife’s ill with Covid and demanding inexhaustible libations and difficult meals, which she will leave uneaten. The…
Reprehensible – but fun: Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's Complete DG Recordings reviewed
Grade: B It must have been an interesting day in the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s press office when Blair Tindall’s memoir…
It was cheap schlock then, and it's expensive schlock now: Adele's 30 reviewed
Grade: C The problem I have is that I thought she was pretty awful before — when she was just…
Decent dream pop: Beach House’s Once Twice Melody reviewed
Grade: B+ Everything these days devolves to prog — and not always very good prog. Where once synths were vastly…
Repetitive, spiritless, god-bothering music: Kanye West's Donda reviewed
Grade: C– The nicest thing one can say is that this is a marginally better album than we would have…
