Bruce Springsteen - Letter To You (Album Review)

Photo: Danny Clinch “One minute you’re here, next minute you’re gone.” With contemplation to the fore as the ticking of father time’s clock grows ever louder, the opening lines of Bruce Springsteen’s barnstorming reunion with the E-Street Band usher forth a collection of life-affirming songs that, by celebrating the ups and downs of an artistic life less ordinary, help their creator rise above the circling cloud of mortality.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Wednesday, 28 October 2020

Matt Berninger - Serpentine Prison (Album Review)

Photo: Chantal Anderson Matt Berninger has one of those voices that you could climb inside. Its default setting is a cracked Leonard Cohen rumble, with rich emotions alternately cloaked and revealed by melodic feints and turns of phrase that flatten it to a near whisper. 

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Tuesday, 27 October 2020

Faithless - All Blessed (Album Review)

‘All Blessed’ is the first Faithless album since their (theoretical) farewell record, ‘The Dance', in 2010, and also their first not to feature former frontman Maxi Jazz, whose bassy lyricism helped define their sound on all their biggest hits.

Written by: Jacob Brookman | Date: Monday, 26 October 2020

Joe Bonamassa - Royal Tea (Album Review)

Photo: Marty Moffat Over the course of his seemingly unstoppable career, Joe Bonamassa has acquired many labels: Smokin’ Joe, guitar prodigy, blues champion. After hearing his latest opus ‘Royal Tea’, recorded at Abbey Road studios with the intention of honouring Britain’s formative blues-rock superstars, we’ll go one further and say that Bonamassa is now the Batman of the blues. Or Bruce Wayne of the blues. Bear with us on this one.​

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Friday, 23 October 2020

Beabadoobee - Fake it Flowers (Album Review)

Photo: Callum Harrison At times, it can feel like an artist’s influences are goading them. There are few things more honest than admitting what songs get you off by stitching elements of them to your own music, but that honesty wears the hefty price tag of being branded empty and derivative. Some artists know that, which is why they pretend they’ve never heard Nirvana. Then there’s Beabadoobee, who trades in a hyper-aware sort of idol worship.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Thursday, 22 October 2020

Andy Bell - The View From Halfway Down (Album Review)

It’s taken Andy Bell 50 years of living to get around to releasing his debut solo album, with Ride’s recent resurgence delaying his bow further. A lot of terrible things have happened as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Bell finding the time during lockdown to finally complete some unfinished songs was not one of them.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Tuesday, 20 October 2020

Corey Taylor - CMFT (Album Review)

Solo albums from singers in successful bands often deliver musical departures that leave fans yearning for their quick return to the mothership. Die-hard Slipknot devotees probably won’t go crazy for frontman Corey Taylor’s debut, but that’s their loss. More likely to appeal to his Stone Sour followers, ‘CMFT’ is a celebratory collision of classic rock, blues, rap, country and more, with big riffs and bigger hooks powering plenty of fun-filled tracks.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Monday, 19 October 2020

Melanie C - Melanie C (Album Review)

Melanie C isn’t afraid anymore. A maximalist flirtation between muscular EDM synths and buoyant, gleaming posi-pop, the Spice Girl’s eighth solo album is frank and affecting in its exploration of self-acceptance. Above all else, it finds true catharsis on the dancefloor.

Written by: Sophie Williams | Date: Friday, 16 October 2020

Laura Jane Grace - Stay Alive (Album Review)

Photo: Alexa Viscius It’s tempting to see an album like Laura Jane Grace’s ‘Stay Alive’ as back-to-basics—it’s a collection of largely acoustic first or second takes recorded on analogue equipment. But there’s no ‘basic’ right now. Everything is difficult, inconvenient or frightening. In that light an apparently simple record becomes forthright and frequently remarkable.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Thursday, 15 October 2020

Bon Jovi - 2020 (Album Review)

On some level, Jon Bon Jovi has always wanted to be Bruce Springsteen. With Bon Jovi’s ‘2020’ he has attempted to craft a prescient socio-political effort that hits with the same emotional force as something from the pen of the Boss. Alas, it mostly strikes with the precision of a banana shaped water pistol. Noble in its intentions but flawed in execution, the album’s main achievement is to showcase the singer’s growing fallibility and his group’s increasingly faceless identity.

Written by: Simon Ramsay | Date: Wednesday, 14 October 2020

Future Islands - As Long As You Are (Album Review)

Future Islands have generally tapped into the less cool, cheesier side of synthesizer music, with their excellent songwriting abilities and Samuel T. Herring’s poetic lyrics breathing new life into a facet of an old format largely best left back in the 1980s.

Written by: Graeme Marsh | Date: Tuesday, 13 October 2020

Touché Amoré - Lament (Album Review)

Photo: George Clarke With each new record Touché Amoré have reinvented themselves to a certain extent, whether that’s expanding their palette as they did between the release of the straight ahead ‘...To The Beat of a Dead Horse’ and ‘Parting The Sea Between Brightness and Me’, or adding 4AD jangle to the mix on their pivotal third LP ‘Is Survived By’. 

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Monday, 12 October 2020

Bob Mould - Blue Hearts (Album Review)

Photo: Blake Little Photography Whenever something terrible happens, there are always people out there who enjoy saying things like, “Well, at least we’ll get some good punk records out of this.” That such an asinine thought would contain a kernel of truth is of little comfort to anyone, anywhere in the real world. The music itself, though, can make a mark. Bob Mould’s ‘Blue Hearts’ makes a mark.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Thursday, 08 October 2020

Róisín Murphy - Róisín Machine (Album Review)

Photo: Adrian Samson There is a fascinating push-pull at the heart of ‘Róisín Machine’—we are at once observing a studious, meticulously-researched attempt to assemble a perfect dancefloor confection, and at the same time being invited to lose ourselves in its sinuous grooves and gossamer melodies.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Wednesday, 07 October 2020

Greg Puciato - Child Solider: Creator of God (Album Review)

Photo: Jesse Draxler Over the best part of two decades, Greg Puciato has solidified his place as one of alternative music’s finest performers. From his tenure as the bestial frontman of mathcore stalwarts the Dillinger Escape Plan to his role as the synthpop lothario leading the Black Queen, he has proven himself an inimitable and unstoppable force.

Written by: Sam Sleight | Date: Monday, 05 October 2020

DevilDriver - Dealing With Demons I (Album Review)

Photo: Stephanie Cabral DevilDriver’s eighth album has an appropriate title. Although the Californian melo-death crew were a cornerstone of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal (thanks to triumphs like ‘The Fury of Our Maker’s Hand’ and ‘Pray for Villains’), the 2010s were not kind.

Written by: Matt Mills | Date: Friday, 02 October 2020

Machine Gun Kelly - Tickets to My Downfall (Album Review)

‘Tickets to My Downfall’ requires some unpacking, and enjoying it requires a little good faith. The key question is this: behind the posturing and conference room cringe, how should we approach Machine Gun Kelly’s pivot from rapper to pop-punk frontman? With a dose of cynicism, or as we would any other debut in the genre? The answer is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not entirely clear cut.

Written by: Huw Baines | Date: Thursday, 01 October 2020

IDLES - Ultra Mono (Album Review)

Photo: Tom Ham Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Equally, being confident and insecure are not mutually exclusive, neither are being offensive and offended. These dichotomies run through IDLES’ third album, ‘Ultra Mono’, where they consistently say both fuck you and thank you.

Written by: Laura Johnson | Date: Wednesday, 30 September 2020

Sylvan Esso - Free Love (Album Review)

Photo: Matthew Tyler Priestley The essence of Sylvan Esso’s music is found in a sense of unity. It’s a theme explored with regularity and intensity on the shapeshifting, utterly mesmerising ‘Free Love’, having already underpinned their live album and accompanying concert film ‘WITH’, a project born from the heady emotions shared with their live band on tour in 2019.

Written by: Sophie Williams | Date: Tuesday, 29 September 2020

Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension (Album Review)

Sufjan Stevens has lost faith in America. This turn of events is all the more profound when you consider the previous work of the singer-songwriter, who painted postcard pictures of his native land with the lo-fi folk of ‘Michigan’ and the opulent concept album ‘Illinois’, the first entries into a supposed ‘50 states project’ that actually turned out to be promotional garble.

Written by: Alex Myles | Date: Monday, 28 September 2020