Pop
Big Thief is this generation’s R.E.M.
By the time Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief was born in 1991, Kim Gordon had already released seven albums with…
How good are the Rolling Stones’ alter egos, the Cockroaches?
Would you pay a tenner on the door to see the Cockroaches, the Fireman, Patchwork, the Network and Bingo Hand…
The joy of Belle and Sebastian
Do Belle and Sebastian have the most polite audience in pop? Normally when a pop singer leaves the stage to…
Unrelentingly entertaining: Basement Jaxx reviewed
How would you like your nostalgia served, sir (and it is usually ‘sir’): in mist-shrouded monochrome or crazed lysergic Technicolor?…
It’s time to redefine what we mean by classic rock
Classic rock used to be an American radio genre made up of bluesy guitar bands from the past. It spawned…
Anthemic angst from The Twilight Sad
The only thing misery loves more than company is a backbeat. While capturing pure happiness surely remains the Holy Grail…
The alluring mess of CMAT
The last time I saw CMAT – Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson – was in the middle of a grey afternoon at…
David Byrne has done it again
The title of David Byrne’s most recent album and current tour is Who Is The Sky?. The phrase works two…
Morrissey is pop’s prophet of England
Morrissey is back. And he’s sassy as hell. At the O2 on Saturday night, the once-waifish Smiths frontman turned stocky…
Flexible and imaginative: Wednesday at the Roundhouse reviewed
How is it that two things that are fundamentally the same can be completely different? Two bands, each harking back…
U2’s childlike response to world affairs
Whither the protest song in 2026? In January 1970, John Lennon wrote and recorded ‘Instant Karma!’ in a single day…
Mumford & Sons are trolling themselves: Prizefighter reviewed
It is axiomatic that most artists spend the first few years of their career trying to achieve some level of…
Electrifying: Annie & the Caldwells, at Ronnie Scott’s, reviewed
Annie & the Caldwells are a long-running family gospel ensemble from West Point, Mississippi – father and sons playing guitar,…
Who stuck the great Emmylou Harris in a sports hall?
Somebody obviously thought it a good idea that Emmylou Harris play her last ever Scottish show in a soulless sports…
Why I will always have time for Bernard Butler
Bernard Butler has popped up a couple of times in this column, but not alone – once, with two fellow…
Zach Bryan is no Springsteen
There would, on the surface, appear to be little common ground between the wife of stuffy old Malcolm Muggeridge and…
Johnny Rotten’s still got it
Robert Plant and John Lydon were fixed in the public mind at the age of 20. Plant, a golden-haired lad…
What links Jeffrey Dahmer to the Spice Girls?
The path that links the Spice Girls to Jeffrey Dahmer – necrophile mass murderer of at least 17 men –…
Thom Yorke reminds me of David Brent: Radiohead reviewed
There were times watching Radiohead’s first UK show for seven years when Ricky Gervais came to mind. As Thom Yorke…
The tedium of softboi rap
A male British rapper who is unafraid to show tenderness and vulnerability is not a particularly new phenomenon: Dave, Stormzy,…
The rise of psychedelia
On YouTube – and I urge you to look it up – there is a magnificent piece of footage from…
No band should play Ally Pally
The last time Gillian Welch and David Rawlings played in London it was a different world: the world of David…
Fionn Regan has gone method Worzel Gummidge
Watching the Mercury Music Prize on television last week, I remembered that Fionn Regan’s debut album, The End Of History,…
In defence of Mick Hucknall
Before Simply Red came on stage at the Greenwich peninsula’s enormodome, the screens showed a clip of a very young…
Has Taylor Swift been reading The Spectator?
The Last Dinner Party received quite the critical backlash when they arrived amid much fanfare in 2023. Posh, precocious and…
