“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...
“Fail again. Fail better,” goes the famous Samuel Beckett line, and while he certainly wasn’t referring to the minefield that is being a twenty-first-century pop star, Bebe Rexha favours the same kind of raw, honest imperfection. The Brooklyn artist’s...
Listening to Squid’s first full-length album is like taking a drive through England: lengthy stretches of undulating green, sometimes interrupted by noisy concrete towns and frenzied cities. But bucolic charm is nowhere to be found. On ‘Bright Green Field’...
Hyperpop has always been underpinned by the radical idea that nothing actually matters – and no artist embodies that in its totality like Dylan Brady. While he is known best in recent years as one of the two genre-mutilating...
Dodie Clark has her own shade of yellow. ‘Dodie yellow’ – official hex code #fef65b – began as the colour of a dress the 24-year-old English singer-songwriter and YouTuber wore in a 2016 vlog, and championed by viewers, quickly...
The first cut is the deepest, as Cat Stevens once sang, which might explain why ‘Young Heart’, written after Birdy’s first major break-up, is five years in the making and nearly an hour long.
In early studio sessions, the heartache...
Mike Kerr shakes off the shingle from his bass on Royal Blood’s third offering ‘Typhoons’, which finds the rock band chasing a cleaner, groovier sound via added synth and falsetto. But the Brighton duo are not Daft Punk reincarnate:...
As Girl In Red journeys closer to indie-pop greatness, it’s difficult not to relish in the artist’s distinguished tone as a breakout aesthete. Following the likes of Billie Eilish and Post Malone, Marie Ulven was plucked from the height...