The Listener
Proudly ridiculous and wholly glorious: KLF's Solid State Logik reviewed
Grade: A What a miracle the KLF were: an elaborate practical joke at the expense of the music industry, seemingly…
As pretty as anything he’s written in four decades: McCartney III reviewed
Grade: A- The greatest songwriter of the 20th century, or just one of the top two or three? Who…
Make Status Quo sound like Stockhausen: AC/DC's Power Up reviewed
Grade: C The fear is this: you’re wearing a leather jacket and hipster jeans and think you look cool, but…
Turn it up and feel the walls shake: John Wilson's Respighi reviewed
Grade: A The strings rear up, there’s a flash of steel from the trumpets, and ten seconds into Respighi’s Feste…
I’ve heard worse things — the death rattle of a close relative, for example: Kylie’s Disco reviewed
Grade: B– Uh-oh. Might have to be careful here, pull my punches a little bit. The editor is a big…
The sound of pop eating itself and throwing up: A.G. Cook’s Apple reviewed
Grade: A The future, then. The sound of pop eating itself, throwing up into a bag and then getting a…
More mimsy soft rock from Cat Stevens: Tea for the Tillerman 2 reviewed
Grade: B– Time has been kind to Cat Stevens’s reputation — his estrangement from the music business and rad BAME…
Virtuosic but slight – always prog’s problem: The Pineapple Thief's latest reviewed
Grade: B– Of all the various subdivisions in that wheezing and crippled phenomenon that we call rock music, prog has…
There's scarcely a dull track: Deep Purple's Whoosh! reviewed
Grade: B+ Less deep purple than a pleasant mauve. Ageing headbangers will note a lack of the freneticism that distinguished…
Fine tunes and spacey, quiet grandeur: Taylor Swift’s Folklore reviewed
Grade: A- This is worrying — like listening to a speech by David Lammy and finding yourself, against your better…
Ranges from the slight to the first-rate: Neil Young’s Homegrown reviewed
Grade: B+ Neil Young has been mining his own past very profitably for a long time now, disinterring a seemingly…
Contains the loveliest new song I've heard in decades: Bob Dylan's new album reviewed
Grade: A ‘Rough’ in terms of the mostly spoken vocals, but only ‘rowdy’ if you’re approaching your 80th birthday, which…
Skates on the edge of parody: The 1975's Notes on a Conditional Form reviewed
Grade: B+ Just what you wanted. An opening track that matches banal piano noodling to an address by Greta Thunberg.…
Beautiful voice, pretentious album: Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters reviewed
Grade: C+ Where did they all come from, the quirky yet meaningful rock chicks who don’t have a decent song…
Haunting and beautiful: Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus’s Songs of Yearning reviewed
Grade: A It has taken 33 years — during which time this decidedly strange Liverpool collective have put out only…
The last great purveyors of a vanishing art form: Green Day’s Fathers of All... reviewed
Grade: B+ It is an eternal mystery to me why Britain has never had much time for power pop, seeing…
Grimes has talent – but not for writing songs: Miss Anthropocene reviewed
Grade: B The old axiom no longer applies. In modern popular music, it is possible not only to gild a…
The rancid meanderings of a long-spent wankpuffin: Justin Bieber’s Changes reviewed
Grade: D– For my first review of popular music releases in 2020 I thought I’d deposit this large vat of…
The cult of Trifonov is doing the pianist no favours
Grade: B– Deutsche Grammophon have decided that Daniil Trifonov’s new Rachmaninov piano concertos with the Philadephia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin…
Woke slogans welded to incompetent grunge: Neil Young’s Colorado reviewed
Grade: B- Horribly woke boilerplate slogans welded inexpertly to the usual incompetent Crazy Horse grunge. Young and his pick-up band…
Patently insincere: Kanye’s Jesus is King reviewed
Grade: B– Kanye West has found Jesus Christ. Lucky old Christ. If I were Christ I’d have hidden out a…
Imagine ZZ Top stuck in a lift with Gary Numan: Sturgill Simpson’s Sound & Fury reviewed
Grade: A– The outlaw country genre has shifted a little over the decades since Waylon and Willie, with each proponent…
Proggery beyond parody: Iggy Pop’s Free reviewed
Grade: D+ Pleasant memories — of hearing ‘Raw Power’ for the first time and later the amiably shambolic chug of…
Great title – shame about the songs: Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell reviewed
Grade: B+ Get the razor blades out, Ms Misery is back. Only the truly affluent can immerse themselves in such…
Needed a shot of Stolichnaya: The Tchaikovsky Project reviewed
Grade: B+ I’m not sure about ‘Projects’. Aren’t those what ageing rockers produce, in a haze of sedatives, when their…
