ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 28 MARCH 2025

A tumultuous week for new releases. ‘Spoilt for choice’ describes it nicely. Here is our selection. Destroyer        Dan’s Boogie Spectacle-laden pop epics, personal piano ballads, and smouldering works of mood that blur the lines between song and novel and cinema. Great, Grandpa           Patience, Moonbeam             Their new album contains signature elements – their nontraditional song structures, […]
Listening to ‘Glory’, the seventh album from Perfume Genius, it becomes apparent why Mike Hadreas’ performance moniker is so appropriate. There is a subtlety to the music and especially his voice that lingers. Initially seeming wispy and fragile, there is more substance than originally seems apparent. It is the equivalent of a scent that strikes […]

ALBUM REVIEW – PERFUME GENIUS: GLORY

EP REVIEW – PUBLIC ORDER: HELLO

Capturing the familiar sentiment that comes with your teenage years alongside the heartbreak and relationship struggles that are also a part of youth, Public Order’s ‘Hello’ is a detailed journey through love, nostalgia and vulnerability. The group’s sun-soaked debut single ‘Feels like summer’ has quickly launched the band onto introducing playlists and festival lineups even […]
There is a nursery rhyme like quality to CocoRosie’s music. It starts from a place of apparent simplicity and charm but underneath there are darker aspects. It would be easy to be swept along by the bricolage of sounds, a veritable junkyard of cheap keyboards and dismiss it as playground pop. Yet in reality, they […]

ALBUM REVIEW – COCOROSIE: LITTLE DEATH WISHES

LIVE REVIEW – ANTHONY SZMIEREK: ALBERT HALL – 21/03/2025

Unlike comedian Louis CK (CK for “Székely”), Anthony Szmierek has the chutzpah to stick with his given name, and also the confidence to almost single-handedly bring back the faded-in perm and banging ‘tache combo. It shouldn’t really work, but boy does it. Just like an English teacher from Hyde mixing spoken word delivery with phat […]
“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 […]

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

ALBUM REVIEW – HANNAH COHEN: EARTHSTAR MOUNTAIN

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 […]
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 […]

ALBUM REVIEW – THE DARKNESS: DREAMS ON TOAST

ALBUM REVIEW – SPELLLING: PORTRAIT OF MY HEART

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 […]
Dreamwave create the kind of swirling, garage psych rock which is brimming with melody and guitar fuelled adrenaline blasts in equal measure. With new EP ‘Moon Dogs’ due for release on 25th April 2025, and several sold out shows already under their belts, we caught up with this Bristol bunch to find out more: Who’s […]

FEATURE: WHO ARE YA – DREAMWAVE – BRISTOL BAND TAKING INSPIRATION FROM THE LIKES OF OSEES, KING GIZZARD, PINK FLOYD, AND ADDING THEIR OWN MELODIC TWISTS TO CREATE A DAZZLING PSYCH ROCK MINDMELT