ALBUM REVIEW – LOATHE: A STRANGER TO YOU

Few bands occupy the space between metal, shoegaze and ambient music as convincingly as Loathe. On A Stranger To You, the Liverpool outfit pushes those boundaries further, crafting an album where crushing heaviness and delicate introspection exist in a constant exchange. Rather than chasing bigger riffs or louder breakdowns, Loathe focuses on atmosphere and narrative, resulting in their most cohesive and ambitious record to date. A Stranger To You opens with ‘Entrance,’ featuring musician bucki sugar. Rather […]
Robyn Hitchcock          The Confuser   As ever, Hitchcock proudly carries the flame for a particular brand of traditional singer-songcraft, a deeply personal penchant sparked by his Summer of Love adolescence (detailed in his acclaimed first memoir, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left) and furthered throughout the myriad cultural metamorphoses that followed. Samuel […]

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 24 JULY 2026

ALBUM REVIEW – BLUE STATES: WHERE THE FADES MEET

Eagerly scanning the Silent Radio mailbox, ever searching for exciting new releases does create a transient, goldfish-like relationship with music. In March 2022, I favourably reviewed ‘World Contact Day’ by Blue States, a woozy, dreamy yet subtle record that I thoroughly enjoyed. In the intervening four years, I had completely forgotten the act and record. […]
Spearmint serves as a great example of the value of fierce independence. All eleven albums from their 1999 debut LP onwards have been released on their own hitBACK label, allowing the band to develop their own distinctive niche in which storytelling is paramount. There is an instantly recognisable quality to their music which is pop-focused […]

ALBUM REVIEW – SPEARMINT: CHASE ME

ALBUM REVIEW – NIA ARCHIVES: EMOTIONAL JUNGLIST

It got to a point where anytime I’d turn on the radio and a song came on that I liked, it was by Bradford-born Nia Archives. A quick listen to 2024’s Silence Is Loud and I realise that radio was right: this is an artist who absolutely needs to be heard. And we’re not the […]
Gracie Abrams has become one of modern pop’s defining voices, celebrated for her intimate songwriting and emotionally honest lyricism. Beginning to write songs at just eight years old, Abrams draws inspiration from artists including Joni Mitchell, Elliott Smith, Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift, shaping her reflective and diaristic approach to music. Since releasing […]

ALBUM REVIEW – GRACIE ABRAMS: DAUGHTER FROM HELL

ALBUM REVIEW – PROTEST THE HERO: WITHIN

Pop punk and progressive metal should, in theory, never be mixed. Some bands form to change things though, and that is exactly the case with Protest The Hero. This Canadian band has never shone away from pushing musical boundaries, and on Within, their first fully independent release, this could not be more obvious. Most importantly, […]
It’s not often that a name and description catch your eye that you can’t help but delve into and immerse yourself and that exactly what happened once I saw Nao Yoshioka. Japanese born and raised Nao Yoshioka embodies what soul is not being held back by expectations and labels. Traditional and contemporary are blended to […]

ALBUM REVIEW – NAO YOSHIOKA: SELF

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 17 JULY 2026

Yard Act             You’re Gonna Need A Little Music       Weirdly, for a band so associated with incendiary live shows and constant touring, their third LP marks the first time that the quartet have ever made an album together, as a live band in the same room. Tricky                  Different When It’s Silent         Across fourteen tracks, Tricky […]
It is 31 years since the release of ‘Maxinquaye’, Tricky’s debut album. Although it was bunched as part of the trip-hop wave, there was something more elemental, almost brutal about the record that made it distinct. ‘Different When It’s Silent’ is his first solo album in six years, although in the intervening years he has […]

ALBUM REVIEW – TRICKY: DIFFERENT WHEN IT’S SILENT