Rock
Playing hooky
One of the curiosities of modern pop’s landscape is that no one knows any longer how to measure success. An…
The weird turned pro
Pop quiz time: which act was named Melody MakerGroup of the Year in 1975? The answer is not, as you…
The death of the live album
Next week The The release The Comeback Special, a 24-track live album documenting the band’s concert at the Royal Albert…
The beautiful and damned
Nick Cave has always been drawn to parable and fable, but more than ever these days he is engaged in…
Happy cross-pollination
This year we must love Edinburgh for her soul rather than her looks. The EIF should be commended for making…
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…
Still Can do
Krautrock pioneer Irmin Schmidt talks to Graeme Thomson about taking risks, playing badly and ignoring the Brits
Mainlining sunshine
One thing about a streamed festival is that the toilets are better than at the real thing. The other thing,…
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
‘I like upsetting people’
Michael Hann talks to the cult rock star Steven Wilson about why it’s harder to write a pop song than prog
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…
Matthew Sweet: Catspaw
Grade: A– The early 1990s were a lovely time for rock music: Beck, Sparklehorse, Sugar, Green on Red and Royal…
Paul McCartney: McCartney III
Grade: A- The greatest songwriter of the 20th century, or just one of the top two or three? Who…
The Pineapple Thief: Versions of the Truth
Grade: B– Of all the various subdivisions in that wheezing and crippled phenomenon that we call rock music, prog has…
Deep Purple: Whoosh!
Grade: B+ Less deep purple than a pleasant mauve. Ageing headbangers will note a lack of the freneticism that distinguished…
Greatness and idiocy
Is the world ready for the return of live rock music? On the evidence of the first gig in London…
Neil Young: Homegrown
Grade: B+ Neil Young has been mining his own past very profitably for a long time now, disinterring a seemingly…
Dysfunctional music by dysfunctional people
A star is born, but instead of emerging into the world beaming for the cameras, he spits and snarls and…
Homage to Avalonia
Televising Glastonbury has changed the festival, and in turn transformed television, says Graeme Thomson
Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways
Grade: A ‘Rough’ in terms of the mostly spoken vocals, but only ‘rowdy’ if you’re approaching your 80th birthday, which…
The Peter Cook of pop
In 1992 Prince released a single called ‘My Name Is Prince’. On first hearing it seemed appropriately regal. Cocky, even.…
The 1975: Notes on a Conditional Form
Grade: B+ Just what you wanted. An opening track that matches banal piano noodling to an address by Greta Thunberg.…
Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Grade: C+ Where did they all come from, the quirky yet meaningful rock chicks who don’t have a decent song…
Public enemy
Many performers hated playing live. But freed from the stage they often made their best and wildest work, argues Graeme Thomson
