Reviews

If weather forecasts are anything to go by, Lou Hayter’s debut solo album should land amid some perfectly timed, highly belated summer weather. Not that ‘Private Sunshine’ needs any help. The record operates like a bottle of concentrated sun...
“In two years, Black Midi’s music will be unrecognisable compared to what it is today,” the London band decreed two years ago. To hold them to their word is unfair, and to hail their second album ‘Cavalcade’ as “unrecognisable”...
Now, I can’t be certain. But I think Olivia Rodrigo might have been dumped.  For her debut LP, ‘Sour’, the 18-year-old High School Musical alumni, has created a break-up album to soundtrack teenage tears the world over. And, we suspect,...
A band who begin their new record with a love song to donuts are probably doing things right. From sweet treats to karaage (fried chicken) and salted rice balls, Chai have food on the brain – even more so...
Audrey Nuna describes ‘a liquid breakfast’ as her journal from the past eighteen months – but it’s no dull pandemic diary. “There’s a lot of different sounds and sides of myself I’ve captured and collected over the months I...
Billie Marten was just 17 when she released her debut album, ‘Writing Of Blues And Yellows’ in 2016. Growing up in rural Yorkshire, the flora and fauna of the natural world framed much of her early writing. In fact,...
Wolf Alice – ‘No Hard Feelings’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoBzpdm_h0c You’re stumbling home in the early hours, friends dispersing until it’s only you and your ex left, awkwardly shuffling your feet as you wait for the night bus. This is where ‘No Hard Feelings’...
“Who wants to be themselves all the time?” wonders Annie Clark. The artist known as St Vincent remains essentially unknowable, ever since her debut record in 2007. She possesses Bob Dylan’s great meld of fakery and emotional truth. She...
In a recent interview, Lana Del Rey revealed that should there be a movie about her life, she’d like to be played by Holly Macve. Helluva compliment. The Irish singer-songwriter certainly looks the part, with a tough, sultry gaze...
Jorja Smith steers her own ship, and she’s in cool, calm command. Other artists might’ve just released ‘Be Right Back’ – a set of eight polished songs – as their second album, with some padding. But not Smith, who...