Writing about Will Young it was hard not to be reminded of Kelly Clarkson, who likewise showed that the first blush of reality TV idols were the best – in terms, at least, of producing stars you can feel vague but huge affection for. I always w[…]

On first listen I liked Syd’s Fin mainly for its Spartan vibe: low-key, late-night R&B synths. Moody and pleasant. My second listen was like my eyes were adjusting to a dark room – songs emerged as ultraviolet blooms. The one that jumped out[…]

Not the last Finnophone musician I’ll be writing about, Mara Balls is the rock-name of musician and artist Maria Mattila, who’s done stints in a few Finnish hard rock bands and also ran the Yellow House, an underground venue and cultural space in[…]

Uyai by Ibibio Sound Machine
There seems to be a lot of music around at the moment involving a fusion of more acoustic – I don’t want to say ‘traditional’ – African musics, or African vocal pop traditions, and electronic production. Of […]

One of the great dangers of listening to music from around the world – as you’ll see, it’s a danger I fall foul of a LOT – is a kind of geographical determinism, At home I’m a tourist, projecting my misty sense of a place I’ve never been […]

(This article was transcribed by me, Drake’s Dad, over a series of Sunday conversations. We counted evolutionary lines as a single Pokemon for space and patience reasons.)

151. MR. MIME (Mr. Mime)
CREEEEEEEEEEEP.
(more…)[…]

Walter Becker of Steely Dan died the week before last, and so I spent last week listening to each of their seven LPs, one a day. “The rim of salt around the cocktail of my taste”, I called them on Facebook: this last week I’ve been […]

Repurposed and edited Goodreads reviews of the Love And Rockets Library (by Los Bros Hernandez; published by Fantagraphics).
Heartbreak Soup (Gilbert Hernandez)
This is my third or fourth time reading these stories, but the first for a decade or so. […]

A list in which the descriptions match the wrong entries.
A list in which the order is determined drunk and the descriptions are written sober.
A list in which the order is determined sober and the descriptions are written drunk.
A list in which the […]

I am still listening to a new-to-me LP every day! A lot – in fact, most – of those LPs come from this year. So here are 30 MORE albums I’ve enjoyed a lot, in some kind of ranking. Confusingly perhaps, these are not all records relea[…]