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The first full uninterrupted year post pandemic saw us enjoy gigging and clubbing again and I was thankful to get to see a lot more live music than I had the previous few years with The Killers, Anne-Marie & Manic Street Preachers all providing memorable sets. The range of music released was perhaps wider than ever with the blurring of house and hip hop not letting up, indeed there was a reported revival of sorts with house identified as having a rebirth. Whilst this was largely spearhead by big name pop acts in the charts, for the primary product - the album, LP, Playlist - it was the hip hop that artistically made the most noise with great albums by Black Thought, Kendrick Lemar and Nas (again) whilst Pusha-T, Little Simz and Drake made vital contributions as well. This got me thinking back to Black Thoughts comments to Complex in 2017 about the crossroads that hip hop and its culture are at: are we now starting to see a subtle change in direction? With the huge social change see...

  Last month saw the 25th anniversary of Oasis' Be Here Now , their third and last album by their classic line up featuring Bonehead & Guigsy and an LP that is Oasis warts and all, everything and the kitchen sink. It was hailed on its release as a classic with 5 star reviews by Q Magazine and Select but after all this time how does it sound now and how does this compared to how it sounded at the time of its release? Is it really their best as many Oasis fans attest or worthy for the charity shop? Below I'll go through it track by track but first.. Context You have to hark back to summer of 1997 and remember where Oasis were at. In less than 18 months they had released two classic albums, a series of great singles and not too mention even better b-sides as well as a number of triumphant live shows. They had started making in roads into America. Lead Up The hype around the record was something I'd not experienced before. For a band that 'got me into music', it was...

Following the  first part of my 2021 review, below is a breakdown of my ten favourite albums of the year as well as a quick overview of songs which I enjoyed: Favourite 10 Albums of the Year 1. Blank & Jones -   Relax Edition 13 At the forefront of the late-90s rise in trance, the German duo of Piet Blank & Jaspa Jones turned to ambient thereafter with the release of their Relax series. This is the latest, a double album of chillout, tasteful funky house and balearic beats and a much needed tonic for lockdown despondency in 2021 - my choice for best album of 2021. 2. St. Vincent -   Daddy's Home A concept album about her father's return from prison, this album's real treat though is how Annie Clark recalls the atmosphere of early seventies downtown New York, the sleaze, the dirt, the funk. A melting pot of Lou Reed, Bowie, Steely Dan even Beatles (on the psychedelic Sun King-esque Live The Dream). 3. Cleo Sol -   Mother The singer in the mysterious...

  IT was the year that a pandemic allowed geeks the chance to shine. Amidst a severe restriction on live performance,  super-fans were busy viewing, cutting and editing together film of their favourite artists and readying them for blockbuster release, funded  by an ever increasing demand and driven by competition from the streaming wars.       With time to kill, we were allowed to indulge ourselves in a number of gems, with Peter Jackson's "The Beatles: Get Back" , Questlove's  "Summer of Soul"  both on Disney+ and Todd Haynes'  "The Velvet Underground"  on Apple TV+ all released to great acclaim.       Each of these documentaries covered the late sixties, part of the analogue era when very little film was actually recorded, in sharp contrast to today where it is so ubiquitous. And it looks we will see more and more as super-fans endeavour to unearth rare footage and bring fans young and old upto date with classic ar...

Black Country, New Road For the first time Debut LP from the most exciting band in the country FORMING FROM the ashes of previous band Nervous Conditions after their singer was accused of sexual assault, Black Country, New Road are seven friends from Cambridge whose friendship shine through on this excitingly fresh debut.       Opening with the klezmer esque-Instrumental seems apt, given the musicianship on display here, saxophone, violin, shuffling hi-hats all feature along with the more obvious bass and guitar. Recent single Athens, France follows, perhaps the most conventional track here, which introduces to us singer Isaac Wood and his nervous, self-deprecating style which is often more spoken word than singing and which is coincidentally not too dissimilar from bassist Tyler Hyde's father Karl Hyde's stream of consciousness as part of his group Underworld. Science Fair is up next and the first clue that folk plays a central role in their sound, with Wood describing a...

Bruce Springsteen   Letter To You     Colombia The Boss is back with the E Street Band for the first time since 2014's High Hopes   AFTER THE PASSING of former E Street Band member George Theiss and   a period of writer's block, Springsteen was  inspired to book 5 days of studio time at his before cajoling himself to come up with some brand new songs for his former band. Assembling them again, all recording was completed in just four days, as they rattled through them and they were recorded live, with minimal overdubs.       These new songs make up nine of the album's 12 songs, whilst the remainder were originally written by Springsteen for his 1973 debut Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and have been subsequently released by others since then including The Hollies' Allan Clarke and Warren Zevon. Springsteen stumbled across his original recordings while assembling a compilation album and decided to complete them.       Opening...

Denise Johnson Where Does It Go PART OF the soul and fabric of Manchester before her sad and untimely passing in July, this is Denise Johnson's posthumous debut album. As a proud Mancunian, who's soulful voice has adorned many a Mancunian band as well as some of Primal Scream's higher watermarks, Johnson chose to record 5 classic songs by Manchester artists as well as record 2 of her own. Things start with the well known New Order song True Faith which is a faithful rendition, with the outro particularly working well on acoustic guitar as the chords change.       10cc's I'm Not In Love follows and is spellbinding - it is my pick of the songs here. With such a short selection - with 7 tracks totaling 28 minutes it is more the length of an E.P. - each track carries more weight but none are filler, each having their their own intriguing beauty including intriguing covers of The Smith's Well I Wonder and Sunshine Over The Rain. A poignant eulogy to a beautiful soul....

Khruangbin Mordechai    DEAD OCEANS  NIGHT TIME STORIES Third album by the American trio from Houston, Texas EVERY NOW and then along comes a band that is a bit different, that doesn't take the novel approach, perhaps even breaks new ground. Enter Khruangbin.  They are a trio, consisting of guitarist and songwriter Mark Speer, bassist Laura Lee, who met Speer through friends and drummer Donald "DJ" Johnson who was subsequently recruited from the ashes of Yppah. They named themselves Khruangbin after, in the rush to get a name before their first gig, Lee suggested 'Khruangbin' - which literally translates as flying engine or aeroplane -  her favourite word in Thai,  a language she was studying at the time. Though in hindsight they have admitted they perhaps would have chosen an easier name to say now they are quite famous, the name signifies the international array of influences, not just playing psychedelia, surf rock, funk and dub but also the sounds of Af...