
Many bands aim for Pet Sounds when they’re trying to make ambitious pop, but a lot of groups miss out on the pure, inventive, playful joy when they’re channelling Brian Wilson, Curt Boettcher & Co. There’s a shed pop, ramshackle feeling to when these things work best, like someone’s tripped over a box of classroom…

A Tory MP has attacked the whole of Drill music, because she thinks it is the reason that young people carry knives. Nickie Aiken says there’s a “direct link” and wants the government to look at record labels that release music that is found “celebrating gang culture.” At the House of Commons, the Cities of…

Never mind Tay Tay announcing a new LP – we can ignored that as everyone has already talked it to death already. We’re more interested in the imminent music from the mighty Kacey Musgraves. She’s been making a slow-melting psychedelic country music since her utterly fabulous ‘Golden Hour’ album (yes, that wasn’t her debut, but…

Look, we were all set to write and long love letter to Fonteyn’s utterly perfect LP ‘Trip The Light Fantastic’, even though it’s not a new release, because it really is one of the most wonderful records you’re likely to hear. The reason we were hesitating is purely selfish, and that was because we didn’t…

We’ve talked about our love for Dina Ögon at length before, and now there’s a new LP to talk about, and that’s the salve we needed to kick off 2024’s first new release review. Again, we find the band in groovy, sophisticated form, melting psychedelic soul, Balearic, dream pop, and something so uniquely their own,…

As the future of being a working musician looks increasingly bleak, collectively we need to work out a way of getting people paid. If we don’t, that means music will only be viable for people who have parents with blue links in their Wikipedia pages and the like. So, with micropayments and subscriptions becoming more…

There’s a new song from STRFKR (hey! That’s a naughty word hidden in there!) called ‘Under Water / In Air’ and it’s a very breezy, poppy bedroom indie song that sounds real nice on a Sunday morning. STRFKR’s Josh Hodges sez: “It was probably one of the most collaborative songs on the record. It started…

You know James Acaster from the TV and clips of him rinsing Ricky Gervais don’t you? A ball of nervous energy in a tracksuit top, famed for his Bake Off failures and his wild ride on Taskmaster. He’s a funny, smart fella. He’s also in a 40 piece collective called Temps, which sees Acaster in…

There’s nothing a music writer likes saying more than ‘toldyouso‘. Be it spotting a band before they get big and you told everyone they’d like them, and they did, or better yet, saying there’s something off about an artist for them to reveal themselves to be dicks. This is all to lead up to this…

We could have said that ‘Thrust’ by McNeal and Niles was getting reissued, but that may not mean a lot to most people. Instead, we’re telling you it has been sampled by J Dilla, because that’s a bit catchier. Either way, it’s a masterful and very, very sought after LP, so this is great news…

Let’s face it – we don’t need to write about the imminent Beyonce tour. We don’t need to mention it at all, because obviously, the Beyhive have alerts set up and publications bigger than this one, with their CEO teams and algorithm jammers, will write about it more prominently. So we’ll be honest and just…
THERE’S NO MONEY IN THIS GAME ANYMORE, BUT IF YOU WANT TO WRITE SOMETHING FOR THE POP CORPS, YOU ARE WELCOME TO GET IN TOUCH. HAPPY HUNTING.
POP CULTURE IS WORTH TALKING ABOUT.
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