
If you’ve been reading the music press this week, there was some alarm or peevish glee (depending on where you were doing your reading) that vinyl sales had dropped. A Billboard piece stated that vinyl sales dropped by 33%, which is not insignificant. That’s selling 34.9 million units, down to 23.3 million in 2024. Are

At the country music awards, they didn’t nominate Beyonce for anything despite her all-conquering country LP and while many shrugged, many were irritated by the whole thing. The irritation came from all sides, but more importantly, so did the shrugs – apart from something for the shelf in the spare toilet or a sticker to

There’s something about golden era rap that just loves a fancy action figure, to place on your shelves next to your collected essays from hip hop journalism, tchotchkes, rap comics and high-end record middles and the like. It’s very wholesome, honestly. Well, Doom’s ‘Mm… Food’ is getting a reissue for its anniversary on November 15th,

Once upon a time, music retreated away from the bombast of Britpop and US rap-rock, and all over the place, more introspective bedroom producers were making tricky electronic music and singer-songwriters gravitated toward the acid-folk of the ’70s, focusing more on cottage industries and community. Tunng managed to straddle both worlds, with critics dubbing their

Look, most bands put a song out to let you know new things are coming, but not 2nd Grade. The power poppers from Philadelphia have chucked THREE whole songs at our ears and mercifully, they’re all really fun and filled with skuzzy pop hooks and jangly guitars. The revival of power pop is very welcome

Today is John Lennon’s birthday – he would have been 84 – and to celebrate this, we’ve been treated to something rather surprising. While a lot of repackaged music from musicians can feel a little exploitative at times, churning out old stuff without much new going on, that’s not the case with this latest Lennon

The excellent GULP are having a party for the 8th instalment of their broadsheet counter-culture magazine, which features all the wonderful words, tidbits, diatribes and cool design we’ve come to expect from them now. The issue drops on Friday 11th October and you can get down in person at The New Cross in Manchester’s Northern

The Indigo Girls are one of those hugely significant bands that mean so much to so many, yet, fly under the radar of most rock press, almost invariably because they’re women, and maybe because they make folk rock. They also happen to be gay, and the male gaze doesn’t stretch that far, clearly. The group…

Not every day is a solid news day, and not every day sees something you want to spend the time reviewing. However, other people are doing good stuff and we feel the need to share that, because we’re not the oracle on everything. With that, the always fantastic Bandsplaining have done a smart video on…

The music industry is sparring with TikTok and the whole thing has the vague whiff of when the music industry had a massive brawl with Napster. Now, of course, the scrap with Napster somehow ended up with Spotify, which isn’t exactly a result for people who make music, but consumers are happy enough. TikTok, for…

Once again, we’re talking about the lousy algorithm. For fear of sounding like horrible old-heads who yearn for the past, we do miss the time when we had every opportunity of listening to the music we wanted to, because we were the people off down the shops and trying before we were buying, and then…
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