Latest Reviews

All good artists evolve, and The Weeknd has shown in the last couple years that the sky truly is the limit when it comes to his musicality. In a continuation of the 80s inspired sound from After Hours, his newest single “Take My Breath” is a deeper exploration into the sounds that brought an entire generation to the dance floor every weekend.

Sounding like a true and proper progression of “Ouch”, Matt Watson, shows his improvements in both his songwriting and production in his newest single, “Bored”, released with his first music video as a solo artist.

In a surprise new single, Motionless in White returns to their roots with “Timebomb”, a true metalcore masterpiece through and through.

Three years after her last album with a whole new sound, MARO is back stronger than ever, alongside musician NASAYA, with I SEE IT COMING, a poppier song, all the while maintaining the elegance she’s exercised consistently in her career.

In a perfect blend of catchy harmonies, groovy rhythms and floating chords, Elko brewed a wonderful late-summer banger with their newest single, “Pretty Little Lies”.

London-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Cat Burns has enjoyed a truly meteoric rise over the last year and a half. When lockdown first hit in the Spring of last year, Burns had just started out posting clips online, mainly through Tik Tok. Within a year she’d amassed well over half a million followers, had been signed by RCA Records, and was the face of a Tik Tok advertising campaign. Not bad work for someone who had been rejected by several labels before embracing the social media platform. 

At the start of this review, it’s only fair that I make a disclosure: Chinatown by Bleachers, featuring none other than Bruce Springsteen, was one of my very favourite tracks of the last year. A real lockdown record, with its haunting vocals and infused with a sense of yearning, it captured the essence of a difficult period. When lead singer and frontman Jack Antonoff and Springsteen crooned “I wanna find tomorrow”, it felt like they were talking to us all and our hope of better times to come.

Though she is probably still most widely known for her work presenting Night Tracks on BBC Radio 3, Hannah Peel is widely recognised as one of the brightest composers around. The Northern Irish artist, composer, producer and broadcaster studied music at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and has a wide and varied CV. Her work includes collaborating with Paul Weller on his number one album On Sunset and writing and conducting all the orchestral arrangements for his 2018 shows at London’s Royal Festival Hall, to composing and recording the soundtrack for Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, which earned Peel a 2019 Emmy nomination for ‘Outstanding Music Composition For A Documentary Series Or Special (Original Dramatic Score).

Predicting what will come next from Liars has become an almost impossible task over the years. The New York outfit are now ten albums and more than twenty years into a career that still refuses to be easily labelled. Their back catalogue has taken in everything from the punk sound that influenced their early releases to funk, electronica, dance and rock. They’ve been through personnel changes – founding member Aaron Hemphill in 2017, and drummer Julian Gross three years earlier – and yet continually refused to stand still.

Coming straight from his new album, there’s something quite cleverly unique with Anders’ opening track, “Free Myself”, through both its tone and melodies, paired with the lack of clear genre and its uniqueness.