LIVE REVIEW – THE DARE: NEW CENTURY HALL – 19/03/2025

“It’s just rock ‘n’ roll, you won’t die!” If there’s one thing The Dare, also known as Harrison Smith, knows how to do, it’s open a show. On the night of his 29th birthday, Smith walks out onto the stage with snippets of ‘Open Up’ ringing out through the venue, he’s greeted with screams and […]
When an album has such a high-quality, diverse set of influences (Dusty Springfield, Gal Costa, Minnie Riperton, Ennio Morricone, Neil Young and Sly & The Family Stone) and an individual way of realising them, it would require a complex mathematical formula to explain what has happened. It would not be fair to say that Hannah […]

ALBUM REVIEW – HANNAH COHEN: EARTHSTAR MOUNTAIN

ALBUM REVIEW – THE DARKNESS: DREAMS ON TOAST

A heavy, thumping riff. A strong, pounding drumbeat. That glamourous metal swagger of Justin Hawkins. The Darkness are back and ready to rock your socks off like they have many times before. The opening track to Dreams on Toast, ‘Rock and Roll Party Cowboy’, is the perfect start to any glam metal album. Loaded with […]
Four years after the release of The Turning Wheel (2021), Tia Cabral dares to fiddle with the work of God in Portrait of My Heart (2025, Sacred Bones Records); creating a unique record in her catalogue that takes distance with their predecessors without losing identity. Cabral is cautious in Portrait of my Heart: the tracks […]

ALBUM REVIEW – SPELLLING: PORTRAIT OF MY HEART

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 21 MARCH 2025

Silent Radio’s guide to the week’s new releases. Benefits            Constant Noise          The band take a different approach to the in-your-face polemics of their debut. Recalibrated as a two-piece featuring founding members Kingsley Hall and Robbie Major. The album is still angry, the band is still angry, but rather than regurgitate what they’ve already done, it […]
“How does it feel when it’s quiet and calm?” Is there such a thing as the “perfect venue”? A venue designed to host live entertainment, Theatre, Live Music, Comedy, can that venue be so intrinsically in tune with the acts it puts forth? Can a venue simultaneously look and embody it’s chosen acts? …well sadly […]

LIVE REVIEW – MICHAEL KIWANUKA: MANCHESTER APOLLO – 13/03/2025

ALBUM REVIEW – CHOSES SAUVAGES: CHOSES SAUVAGES III

It will come as no surprise that ‘Choses Sauvages III’ is the third album from the Montreal based six-piece of that name. While they might take their numerological approach to record naming from Led Zeppelin, that is where the similarities end. Back in an era where musical tribal loyalties were more dogmatic, they would have […]
Sacred Paws have a signature sound, a blend of Afrobeats and highlife with a post-punk spikiness and pop melodicism. While this can be blessing, it also has its drawbacks. Any of their songs are instantly identifiable as their own work but it does mean that new releases do not contain a huge element of surprise. […]

ALBUM REVIEW – SACRED PAWS: JUMP INTO LIFE

SINGLE REVIEW – LUCY WROE: THE VAULT

It had been a rough winter. Global politics swung with the same volatility as the weather outside—unpredictable, unrelenting, and sometimes disconcerting. Cold, dark days had felt endless, as if the world had settled into a permanent sepia haze, with no sign of spring and the inevitable feeling of hope that it carried. Then, in the […]
Silent Radio’s guide to the week’s new releases. Circuit des Yeux         Halo on the Inside     The latest from Haley Fohr is a rhapsodic, hedonistic, dance floor-adjacent, pagan-friendly, horns-adorning wall of sound and emotion. The Loft             Dr Clarke         Latest from first Creation band on TV, first to hit the top of the indie singles chart, first […]

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 14 MARCH 2025