Pop
Billie Eilish: Happier Than Ever
Grade: C+ Time to get the razor out again — Billie’s back. The slurred and affected can’t-be-arsed-to-get-out-of-bed vocals. The relentless,…
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…
Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth: Utopian Ashes
Grade: B– Is there anyone in rock music more irritating and stupid than Bobby Gillespie? The rawk’n’roll leather-jacketed self-mythologiser. The…
Kings of Convenience: Peace or Love
Grade: A– The problem with Norwegians is that they are so relentlessly, mind-numbingly pleasant. Well, OK, not Knut Hamsun or…
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…
Black Midi: Cavalcade
Grade: A– Imagine a really disgusting and immoral scientific experiment in which the members of Weather Report, the Mahavishnu Orchestra,…
Ladies first
On the way home from This Is The Kit’s show at a socially distanced Barbican, I listened to Avalon by…
Still Can do
Krautrock pioneer Irmin Schmidt talks to Graeme Thomson about taking risks, playing badly and ignoring the Brits
‘My voice is a curse’
Steve Morris talks to Gary Numan about luck, plane-spotting and Asperger’s
Live and kicking
There is a reason music writers tend to stick with music writing rather than transferring their manifold talents to the…
Teenage Fanclub: Endless Arcade
Grade: B– Advancing age has smoothed the edges of Bellshill’s finest lads, once — back in the early 1990s —…
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…
‘I’m not interested in moral purity’
Michael Hann talks to St Vincent about Sheena Easton, Stalin and performing in five-inch heels
Tom Jones: Surrounded by Time
Grade: C Revisionism has been extraordinarily kind to Tom Jones, ever since he barked his way through Prince’s ‘Kiss’ with…
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?…
Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil… the Art of Starting Over
Grade: Z If you wish to experience the full hideousness of Now, of our current age, condensed into one awful…
Mainlining sunshine
One thing about a streamed festival is that the toilets are better than at the real thing. The other thing,…
Life after deaf
The multi-Oscar-nominated Sound of Metalstars Riz Ahmed as a heavy-metal drummer whose life is in freefall after losing his hearing.…
Blasts from the past
One of the unforeseen consequences of the rise of streaming was a change in the very structure of the pop…
It’s cool to spool
May the gods of Hiss and Compression bless Lou Ottens. As head of new product development at Phillips, the Dutch…
Bedroom pop
A short history of lo-fi, by Robert Barry
