LIVE REVIEW – SPARKS: MANCHESTER APOLLO – 22/06/2025

David Bowie’s 1972 appearance on Top of the Pops with ‘Starman’ is usually cited as the ultimate transformative performance on the show. As someone who was a couple of years too young for Bowie, Sparks’ debut with ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us’ seemed similarly iconic. Whilst the seven-year-old me might not […]
There is always unadulterated glee running through Silent Radio’s suite of luxury offices when a new BC Camplight album is announced. His most recent classic, ‘The Last Rotation of Earth’, was our album of 2023 and the culmination of a run of four records dating back to 2014’s ‘How To Die in the North’ that […]

ALBUM REVIEW – BC CAMPLIGHT: A SOBER CONVERSATION

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 20 JUNE 2025

The Sick Man of Europe        The Sick Man of Europe        Their name connects the current post-Brexit landscape to the austerity of Thatcherite Britain and the social conditions that shaped the likes of Bauhaus and Joy Division. These are touchstones for TSMOE, but the influence and discipline of Neu!, Suicide and Swans are just as intrinsic […]
When an artist has been in the public eye for nearly four decades like Kim Deal, her audience brings a bundle of memories to her shows. In my case, that includes a first encounter in spring 1988 when Pixies were touring with Throwing Muses. In hindsight, it seems unimaginable that such a dream double bill […]

LIVE REVIEW – KIM DEAL: NEW CENTURY HALL – 17/06/2025

ALBUM REVIEW – U.S. GIRLS: SCRATCH IT

“You gotta dance til you feel better.” So begins ‘Like James Said’, the James Brown quoting opener to Meg Remy’s latest album as U.S. Girls, ‘Scratch It’. While it might be more appropriate to categorise the nine tracks that comprise the record as hyper-emotional pop music, they also occasionally scratch the urge to dance. “Stretch […]
If you were a teenager in the early to mid-2010s you would have heard the song ‘She Looks so Perfect relentlessly throughout every radio station, and a repeat of this with “Youngblood.” However, now is the time for the band 5 Seconds of Summer, or 5sos, who created those songs to go their own separate […]

ALBUM REVIEW – CALUM HOOD: CHAOS ORDER CHAOS

LIVE REVIEW – SPELLLING: YES PINK ROOM – 10/06/2025

For Ingrid Blood in your pee? Contact your GP practice. NHS’s memento mori. Quick wee before the start of the gig.  From Canada, Debby Friday opened the night accompanied by her DJ. As @IngridKern338 commented on Debby Friday’s 1/17 Youtube video:  Catchy music, exuberant joyful singing, love those clouds rollin’ on by, and extremely cute […]
The smell of delicious fresh coffee greets my nostrils as we make ourselves comfy at the BC Camplight kitchen table. It’s been two years since we last met, before the release of the brilliant ‘Last Rotation Of Earth’, and although much has changed since then, one thing remains a reassuring constant – Brian ‘BC Camplight’ […]

FEATURE: BC CAMPLIGHT – STUNNING NEW ALBUM ‘A SOBER CONVERSATION’ OUT 27th JUNE. PLAYING MANCHESTER APOLLO 14TH NOVEMBER

ALBUM REVIEW – BLACK MARKET KARMA: MELLOWMAKER

A singular phrase kept creeping its way into my head whilst listening to Mellowmaker, Black Market Karma’s latest album. A phrase that I feel embodies the ethos and feeling of the LP. That phrase was “beauty in it’s imperfections”. Mellowmaker is an album that is aware it can’t be perfect, but revels in its differences, […]
Joe Armon-Jones        All The Quiet (part II)               Second of two distinct but conceptually linked albums find the London-based keyboardist, producer, songwriter and bandleader expanding his sound into new musical and sonic realms, assisted by a wealth of special guests including Nubya Garcia, Asheber, Greentea Peng, Wu Lu, Hak Baker […]

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 13 JUNE 2025