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The Best Albums of 2021

With long-awaited returns from Adele, Ed Sheeran and Kanye West, blockbuster debuts by rising stars Olivia Rodrigo and Lil Nas X, and quietly confident follow-ups from Billie Eilish and Lorde, the album as a format is as impactful in 2021 as ever before. As a form of artistic expression as well as a commercial product,Continue reading “The Best Albums of 2021”

Review: Lana Del Rey – Blue Banisters

Just the day after the release of her seventh studio album Chemtrails Over The Country Club in March of this year, Lana Del Rey announced her next project Rock Candy Sweet would be out in June. Then postponed until July and retitled Blue Banisters, the album was teased with a collection of singles, before beingContinue reading “Review: Lana Del Rey – Blue Banisters”

Revisiting Taylor Swift’s Red

Last week Taylor Swift released her newly re-recorded version of her 2012 album Red. I look back on why this ‘happy, free, confused and lonely’ record remains her best work to date. ‘Like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street’: this is how Taylor Swift describes a doomed love affair on Red’s title track,Continue reading “Revisiting Taylor Swift’s Red”

Review: Sam Fender – Seventeen Going Under

Happy songs are easy to come by. Political commentary is woven throughout the popular music canon. But creating music that speaks truth to power while affirming the very things that make life worth fighting for is a much harder task. Bruce Springsteen could do it, Stevie Wonder could do it, and Sam Fender can certainlyContinue reading “Review: Sam Fender – Seventeen Going Under”

Solar Power, Folklore and the Dream of Escape

Whether it’s flinging your phone into the ocean or fleeing to the mountains, singers are calling on us to abandon the digital world and embrace nature. But is this escape into the outdoors a radical act of rebellion or an unattainable fantasy? ‘I’m not cut out for all these cynical drones, / these hunters withContinue reading “Solar Power, Folklore and the Dream of Escape”

Review: Yola – Stand For Myself

Following her Grammy-nominated 2019 debut Walk Through Fire, English singer and songwriter Yolanda Quartey returns with an impressive second album. Much like its predecessor, Stand For Myself is rooted in country, soul and a smattering of rock ‘n’ roll, Quartey’s indomitable vocals coursing through the soundscape of 60s and 70s America. But along with moreContinue reading “Review: Yola – Stand For Myself”

Review: Bleachers – Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night

Maybe it was the dusky blue cover artwork or the vibrant energy of the singles or perhaps just the enticing, twilit romanticism of the title, but Bleachers’ third studio album Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night seemed poised to be their most cohesive and expressive LP to date. And on one hand the albumContinue reading “Review: Bleachers – Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night”

Review: Billie Eilish – Happier Than Ever

Last time she was the bad guy, the monster under your bed, revelling in the stuff of nightmares. Now, two years after her award-winning debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, Billie Eilish returns with a softer, more personal album. Stretching across pop, R&B, folk, rock and even bossa nova, Happier ThanContinue reading “Review: Billie Eilish – Happier Than Ever”

Review: Spellling – The Turning Wheel

For Chrystia Cabral, better known by her playful pseudonym, Spellling, music is eternal, ethereal, organic, woven throughout nature. ‘I hear the musical words / in the arc of a rainbow, / in the spider’s harp,’ she sings on the final track of her magnificent third LP, The Turning Wheel. Nature – its beauty, its nurturingContinue reading “Review: Spellling – The Turning Wheel”

The Raincoats, and the imperfect humanity of music

If the ethos of punk rock was to rip up the hit-making rulebook, strip back the gloss and the excess, and value raw fervour over technical accuracy, then the Raincoats, formed in 1977 by then novice musicians Ana da Silva and Gina Birch, were perhaps the punkest of the punk. Their band took the homemadeContinue reading “The Raincoats, and the imperfect humanity of music”