Pop
Hot metal and methadrine
They may no longer get many teenagers at their shows spending all their money on merchandise, then throwing up on…
Another Albion
As August unwound, the EIF settled into the cavernous gazebo that is Edinburgh Park, and things began to loosen up.…
Happy cross-pollination
This year we must love Edinburgh for her soul rather than her looks. The EIF should be commended for making…
Musical Medicis
The new music economy relies on cross-promotion and artists reaching out to different scenes. And the rise of streaming means…
State of the union
Big Red Machine release their second album later this month. It’s a fine name for ten tonnes of agricultural apparatus…
Could she be the new Sade?
Some years ago, when I was the music editor of a newspaper, I called a number of historians of black…
The real death of rock
What would a rock band have to do now to be seen as heralding the future? Twenty years ago, it…
Aural hot chocolate
I’ve given up comfort food. I’m trying to shift lockdown pounds that have left me with the physique of the…
Ska struck
When Trojan Records attempted to break into the United States music market in the early 1970s, it hit an insurmountable…
Ladies first
On the way home from This Is The Kit’s show at a socially distanced Barbican, I listened to Avalon by…
Live and kicking
There is a reason music writers tend to stick with music writing rather than transferring their manifold talents to the…
Off-the-peg ire
Over the decades, Van Morrison’s role within the tower of song has shifted from chief visionary officer to head of…
Sandy psychedelia
The other week someone posted on Twitter a link to a YouTube clip titled ‘Family Lotus and D.J. Cookin’ at…
Women’s troubles
It has never been easy for women in the music industry. Once upon a time the evidence was largely anecdotal.…
Nowt so great as folk
Has any musical moment extended its tendrils in so many unexpected directions as the English folk revival of the mid-1960s?…
Mainlining sunshine
One thing about a streamed festival is that the toilets are better than at the real thing. The other thing,…
Blasts from the past
One of the unforeseen consequences of the rise of streaming was a change in the very structure of the pop…
In league with the devil
The most headline-grabbing of these three pop docs was Framing Britney Spears, part of the New York Times Presents documentary…
Bands on the run
Twitter was awash with mockery last week, after Adam Levine, the singer of the American group Maroon 5, was interviewed…
Rock and awe
You very possibly know the music of the Glaswegian band Mogwai, even if you don’t think you do. You might…
When music was more than a click away
In Teenage Superstars, a long and slightly exhausting documentary about the Scottish indie scene of the 1980s and ’90s, there…
Ordinary but extraordinary
How hard must it be to make music that sounds like no one else? And how unrewarding, often, as well?…
Simply divine
Three shows in a week! Why, it was just like the first week of March. There was, however, little of…
Potted herring and Lester Piggott
Q: ‘How would you define transcendence?’ A: ‘Well, how would you define it?’ I interviewed Van Morrison last year. (I’m…
Greatness and idiocy
Is the world ready for the return of live rock music? On the evidence of the first gig in London…
