In late 1967, the BBC launched Radio 1 as an attempt to fill the void created by the banning of the pirate radio stations that had been beaming pop music into homes around the nation. Leaving the more experimental sounds to John Peel at night, the DJs played a bright and sunny mix of pop music, something that the minds behind Grapefruit’s 2025 collection All Things Bright and Beautiful: The UK Pop Explosion 1967-1969 have sought to recapture. Over the course of three CDs, a parade of hooks so sharp they could cut glass do battle with melodies so sweet they would scare a diabetic and harmonies so rich they might need to move to the Isle of Man.
Big names like the Hollies drop in occasionally with big hits like “Carrie Anne,” but for…
Category: pop
Some musicians get their first glimpse of celebrity, flinch in the glare of the spotlight, and quickly burrow their way back underground. But Duncan Sumpner, you suspect, knew from the beginning that fame – even fame on a very small and grassroots indie level – was not for him.
A schoolteacher from Oughtibridge, a residential village on the outskirts of Sheffield, Sumpner has released a string of records under the name Songs of Green Pheasant without ever quite stepping into the light. The project’s origin story speaks volumes about his elusive approach. A demo that Sumpner sent to Fat Cat in 2002 became a fixture on the label’s office stereo. But when they decided to get in contact to offer him a record deal, the email bounced back, and it took them…
1. The Soft Boys – I Wanna Destroy You
2. Doctors of Madness – Bulletin
3. Vic Godard – Malicious Love
4. Andy Partridge – Earn Enough for Us
5. John Cooper Clarke – Psycle Sluts (Parts 1 & 2)
6. Billy Bragg – Levi Stubbs’ Tears
7. Squeeze – Up the Junction
8. Nick Lowe – Cruel to Be Kind
9. Philip Rambow & Kirsty MacColl – There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop… (Demo)
10. Deaf School – Capaldi’s Cafe
11. Graham Parker – Saturday Nite Is Dead (Live)
12. Madness – Friday Night, Saturday Morning
13. Radio Stars – Is It Really Necessary?
14. Wilko Johnson – Down By the Waterside
15. Wreckless Eric – Our Neck of the Woods
Julee Cruise was a remarkable enough talent in her own right that it seems a shame to emphasize her links with David Lynch, but he’s an inescapable presence on this 2-CD set. That’s because Fall_Float_Love comprises her two albums for Warner Brothers, Floating into the Night (1989) and The Voice of Love on which, apart from one song, all the lyrics were written by Lynch, and all the music was composed and arranged by his collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. With the deaths of both Cruise and Badalamenti in 2022 and Lynch this year, the music takes on an even more spectral and haunting quality (and it started off with plenty of both those qualities), and Fall_Float_Love stands as a fitting memorial to the meeting of three unique but entirely compatible talents.
…digital Deluxe Edition adds four new tracks.
On her debut album, 2025’s The Long Way Round, British singer and guitarist Maya Delilah brings you deep into her chilled-out musical world. It might be a little too easy to sum up Delilah’s sound as the answer to “What if Norah Jones could play guitar like Eric Clapton?,” but the comparison does nicely capture the influences at play in the London-bred artist’s work.
While not explicitly a jazz or blues album, there are improvisational moments throughout and Delilah’s sweet-toned fretboard work certainly recalls the late-’70s/early-’80s style of players like Clapton and Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler. Vocally, Delilah favors a hushed intimacy that she sustains throughout the whole album, easing…
Marc Almond has personally curated this celebratory 2CD expanded re-issue of his lesser known 2016 electro-pop album. Lesser known simply because, hitherto, it has only had a limited vinyl release in Germany.
Silver City, now a definitive 20 track techno-pop opus, was written and produced by Marc with celebrated cult German electronic music production duo Starcluster and is Marc Almond’s “most synth laden body of work since Soft Cell” (Electricity Club, 2016). It is indeed, a sheer joy to hear Marc Almond’s deft and distinctive vocals alongside a vast array of vintage analogue synthesisers in this resplendently authentic, retro-futuristic setting; an album that provides an eloquent refracted echo of his formative synth-pop work in revered…
Vazz formed in Glasgow during the early ’80s, and initially consisted of vocalist/lyricist Anna Howson and multi-instrumentalist Hugh Small. With Howson’s ethereal harmonies floating over Small’s sparse drum machines and mysterious guitar hooks, the duo’s music fell somewhere between coldwave, post-punk, and dream pop. The five-song mini-album Your Lungs and Your Tongues (released in 1986 by Cathexis Recordings, also home to records by Fini Tribe and Pink Industry) was one of a handful of vinyl releases the pair made before splitting up near the end of the decade. As Small resurfaced during the 2010s with solo piano and ambient compositions, Vazz’s scant ’80s discography was rediscovered and revived in several different configurations…
The 12″ single redefined music and the way we move to it, something that’s celebrated on the fantastic new four-CD collection from Cherry Red Records, Extended Stimulation: 12″ Pop Adventures on the Dancefloor 1983-1988. While 12″ vinyl is generally associated with disco, electronic, and hip-hop, this box set explores just how revolutionary it could be for traditional pop music, featuring tracks from the likes of New Order, Simply Red, the Human League, Duran Duran, Talk Talk, Pet Shop Boys, and many others.
However, these may not be the songs as most people remember them. That’s because everything here is either a remix (or extended mix) of some kind, originally released on 12″ vinyl. A little history lesson may be in order. Before the 12″…
Lightning in a Twilight Hour are another band built around the heartbreak of Bobby Wratten, and like the Field Mice, Northern Picture Library, and Trembling Blue Stars, their albums are made up of songs that trickle like warm tears down the cheeks of a heartbroken soul. Colours Yet to Be Named has all the hallmarks of his work: precisely jangling guitars, dub-inspired basslines, soothingly dark synth pads, and vocals that alternately glide on top of, or sink into, the gloom. Wratten is joined as he was on the group’s previous masterpiece of overwhelming melancholy Overwintering by longtime collaborators Anne Marie Davies and Beth Arzy on vocals along with producer Ian Catt and bassist Michael Hiscock. They work together seamlessly to create a soft…
One of the traits of what is loosely dubbed as modern classical music is that the classical composition concept serves solely as the base, where other elements are brought in, coming from the musical ideas developed further elsewhere – it could be pop in all its shapes and forms or just a figment of the artists’ imaginations.
That is basically a manner in which Vanbur, a collaboration of Bristol-based composers Jessica Jones and Tim Morrish, seem to be building their music upon their (formal) debut album Of Becoming. Actually, the manner in which the duo were to develop their music could have already been visible/audible with their debut EP Human (2020), and its remix version (2022), including versions by Mogwai, Alexandra…
At first glance, it seems like Horse Vision build their debut album, Another Life, from wholly familiar ingredients. Its drop-D tuning, rhotic vocals, and pastoral guitar passages would slot in nicely on the shelf between Alex G and Pinegrove. But then the Swedish duo of Johan Nilsson and Gabriel von Essen will throw in something unexpected: They interpolate a classic pop song, or get Swedish singer Tiffi M to sing an Auto-Tuned chorus straight out of a Porter Robinson track, or drop what might be the most heartwarming MIDI airhorn riff ever put to tape. Another Life isn’t strictly Americana, but it does feel informed by an American attitude, winking at the tropes of U.S. pop culture right now — gratuitous mashups, unblinking earnestness, shaky irony — in a way…
Niia Bertino’s V marks her return to jazz after several years spent exploring indie pop, edgy R&B, and neo-soul. Its striking black-and-white cover photo reveals her posing with a heretic fork around her neck. The implement was a torture device used during the Middle Ages to punish people who challenged orthodox rules.
The set was co-produced by Spencer Zahn and Lawrence Rothman. Both wrote or co-wrote songs for the set, as did Chloe Angelides and the date’s saxophonist Nicole McCabe.
Niia‘s vocals and piano are backed by an assortment of contributors including bassist Anna Butterss, McCabe, drummer James McAlister, trumpeter Jon Natchez, and brass multi-instrumentalist CJ Camereri.
David Garland may not be a household name for many, but he’s a singer-songwriter, composer, instrument designer, illustrator, graphic designer, journalist, and former New York City radio personality. Over the years, he has recorded with a diverse range of artists, including John Zorn, Sufjan Stevens, Meredith Monk, and Sean Lennon. The latter described Garland as someone who “pushes the limits of acceptable harmony and dissonance, yet never at the expense of beauty”. It’s an impressive resume that barely scratches the surface, and his wild, eclectic work continues on a new album that sees the multifaceted artist grappling with loss, specifically his wife’s death from cancer six years ago.
The Spark was recorded primarily in Garland’s…
Composer/producer Paul Russell (Axes/Tough Glove) returns with Thank You, the fourth album to be released by his Human Pyramids project. Featuring members of Axes, Suicide Bid and Modern Studies, the album was recorded all over the world and mastered by Alan Douches (Sufjan Stevens/Animal Collective).
…The twelve-strong ensemble, anchored by Russell, still pulls out all the stops. Almost every track is a party, with generous servings of brass and strings. Guitar, accordion, marimba, vibraphone and hammered dulcimer fill in the buffet. The music’s propulsive energy keeps the spirts high; the opening track (titled “Shut Down,” since the music stops and restarts in the second half) eases the listener in with…
It’s quite a distance from New York City to Water Valley, Mississippi, a small town in the deep south of the USA, not too far from Tupelo. With its thriving music scene, it was here that native New Yorker Pete Mancini chose to record his fourth solo album American Equator. Produced by Drive-By Trucker Matt Patton in his studio, Dial Back Sound, the pair had also collaborated on Mancini’s Killing the Old Ways in 2020.
With Patton again producing and playing terrific bass lines alongside fellow Trucker Jay Gonzalez on keyboards and guitars, comparisons are inevitably made with Drive-By Truckers. While it’s true to say that their many fans will find much to love about this album, there are other influences at work here. With hints of Blondie and…
Omnivore Recordings and The International Pop Overthrow Music Festival are proud to present International Pop Overthrow: Vol. 26, a three-disc compilation featuring 66 tracks by artists from all over the world who have played the International Pop Overthrow (IPO) festival, along with some who haven’t — at least, not yet! The IPO compilations go back as far as the festival, to 1998 when Vol. 1 was a single disc. Since then, the collection expanded to two discs the following year, and then three discs in 2002 for Vol. 5, and it has remained a three-a set since. International Pop Overthrow: Vol. 26 showcases artists from across the globe, doing just about every sub-genre of pop music, including power pop, pop/rock, folk/pop, psychedelic pop, garage, indie-rock, modern…
Kim Wilde released her brilliant and critically acclaimed brand new album Closer on Cherry Red Records at the beginning of 2025. We conclude 2025 with this expanded, deluxe edition featuring the original album along with an exquisite selection of exclusive bonus recorded in relation to Closer throughout 2025.
‘Closer’ was the follow-up to Kim Wilde’s massively successful 1988 album ‘Close’. While it captures the spirit and style of her earlier work, Kim’s new album introduces a modern perspective, blending nostalgic elements with contemporary sounds. Kim Wilde’s signature mix of pop, new wave, and rock-known for its infectious hooks, powerful vocals, and anthemic choruses-remains at the heart of her music, ensuring ‘Closer’ resonates with both…
Released in 1989, Def, Dumb & Blonde is Debbie Harry’s third, solo, studio album.
Although Debbie Harry‘s popularity had decreased by the late ’80s, 1989 wasn’t a bad year for her at all. That year, Blondie’s former lead vocalist successfully portrayed a struggling singer on the brilliant but underrated CBS crime drama Wiseguy, and demonstrated that she could still have considerable fun in the studio.
Under the direction of hit producer Mike Chapman – who had worked with Blondie, as well as with everyone from Sweet to Scandal – Harry delivers an eclectic CD that isn’t in a class with a Blondie treasure like Parallel Lines but nonetheless has a lot going for it. Much of this new wave-ish pop/rock and European-flavored dance music…
Across the world, cassette tapes have often carried far more than music, serving as tools of defiance, memory, and belonging. In Somalia and Somaliland, songs recorded on battered tapes crossed seas and borders, keeping scattered communities connected through poetry and melody. In Palestine, revolutionary anthems slipped through checkpoints and broadcast the sound of resistance where radio could not reach. In Afghanistan, banned voices lived on in bootleg cassettes passed hand to hand, their melodies vehemently resisting the silence imposed upon them.
In Iran, too, the cassette has been used as both a weapon and a refuge: First used by Khomeini to spread his revolutionary sermons, it was reclaimed by Iranian pop artists fighting to…
…remastered & with 5 bonus tracks.
“Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day”, maintains Paul McGann’s character near the start of Withnail and I. He plays Marwood – the ‘I’ of the title – in a drunken and druggy but decidedly unpsychedelic cinematic glimpse into the late 1960s. The film initially flopped in cinemas at the height of 1980s yuppiedom, only to find cult adoration (and over quotation) via subsequent release on video. Everything has its right time in the end. And so it is with Henry Badowski’s one and only album Life Is a Grand, which is finally getting the reissue it justly deserves after all but disappearing, along with its creator, to near complete indifference following its release in 1981. Indeed Badowski himself seems more…