whynow • 12th September 2021

The Vaccines are Back in Love City

EXCLUSIVE: whynow speaks to The Vaccines on the album they wish they never made, the notion of band identity, and being back in love city.

Variety • 16th March 2021

Kings of Leon Talk New Album, What’s Next and Why Solo Careers Are Unlikely

Sometimes you have to cut loose from the shackles of self-perception to really be free. Nearly two decades into their recorded career, Kings of Leon are a band now willing to let go of commercial concerns. “We’ll argue with the record label later if we don’t have the radio hit,” frontman and principal songwriter Caleb Followill tells Variety.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM • 15th October 2020

Stevie Nicks: "In Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie and I were a force of nature" | NME

Nothing will slow Stevie Nicks down. When Fleetwood Mac concluded their year-long world tour at the end of 2019, the 72-year-old singer songwriter decamped to her Santa Monica home with the intention of taking the year off from touring. l

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM • 11th November 2019

Shakira on dark days, angry poetry and bounceback for the El Dorado Tour

In October 2017, Latin pop superstar Shakira was wrapping up five months of arduous rehearsals in preparation for her ‘El Dorado’ world tour when she suddenly felt a bit hoarse. A few days later, Shakira’s opening show in Cologne, Germany, was cancelled on advice of her doctors, who diagnosed her with strained vocal chords.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM • 17th October 2019

Mystify: Michael Hutchence review: a touching tribute to a pop-rock icon

By the time the 1996 Brit Awards rolled into view the silky sounds of Australian rock juggernaut INXS had fallen out of favour.

Skiddle • 1st October 2019

Charlie Cunningham interview: Fenders, Flamenco and the future

A few years ago, guitar-toting virtuoso Charlie Cunningham cashed in his beloved Fender Telecaster so that he could fund a train ticket to Seville to learn flamenco. A few years passed before he returned home. Like a musical prodigal son, his return secured a record deal and a hit album, Lines.

Hackney Gazette • 29th August 2019

Headie One 'Music x Road' review

Whether the drill rap scene likes it or not, for those outside of its primary audience the view persists that it is a genre dogged by ignominious repute. YouTube video purges and Met Police pleas decrying a violent culture surrounding the movement has abetted this impression, ensuring that drill has been classified as both soundtrack and enabler to a worrying cultural malaise.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM • 12th August 2019

Bob Dylan needs to save from himself, and call time on The Never Ending Tour

For the purpose of an experiment go and gather all of your prized possessions. Now walk to the window, toss them onto the street and run wild-eyed down the stairs with a can of petrol in hand. Dance around the heap, douse it in the flammable liquid before striking a match in the full glare of your (quite possibly terrified) neighbours.

Hampstead Highgate Express • 15th July 2019

Live at Hyde Park Bob Dylan and Neil Young

Some sad sights are interwoven with pangs of spectator guilt and complicity. Watching the severely diminished faculties of a 78-year-old Bob Dylan in 2019 conjures such emotions in spades. A pity, since this was an historic double bill event with Dylan and Neil Young brought together for the first time ever in Hyde Park.

SupaJam • 4th July 2019

Elevensies: 11 Takeaway Moments from Glasto 2019

As the dust settles on the penultimate Glasto before the 50th anniversary next year, and more importantly, all the friendships severed between FOMO-furious friends and smug attendees can start to mend, we look back on what we call the 11 takeaway moments from Glastonbury 2019.

Skiddle • 6th June 2019

Bon Iver All Points East 2019 review

Staring up at the impressive backdrop and expansive instrumentation that envelope Bon Iver, the collective title for Justin Vernon’s musical troupe, it is clear that the group are a long way from home. Actually, to put it better: they are some considerable distance from their modest, humble and almost fairy-tale beginnings.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM • 22nd October 2018

Shotty Horroh talks his debut acting role in battle rap film VS.

‘Rock and roll rears its head when the voiceless need a voice. The council estates are always ignored. Especially up north’, the rapper told NME.

Hampstead Highgate Express • 20th July 2018

Paul Simon: Homeward Bound - The Farewell Tour – BST, Hyde Park

The perils of the outdoor gig. Chattering masses mixing with hushed, reverent devotees. Luckily, despite the best efforts of the former, chitter chatter failed to mar the splendid entertainment presented by Paul Simon and his band in what has been coined as his ‘Farewell Tour’.

Hampstead Highgate Express • 12th July 2018

Concert Review: Roger Waters BST Hyde Park

Erstwhile Pink Floyd writer, bassist and co-vocalist Roger Waters kicked off this year’s British Summer Time series of gigs with a dialectic that very much focused on the notion of ‘us and them’. Not just the song from his former band’s seminal The Dark Side of the Moon album – which incidentally stood as a highlight of the whole show - but also of the economic and social chasms within society.

Skiddle.com • 26th June 2018

Anna Calvi live at Heaven London review

Anna Calvi is back after an almost two-year live absence and her demeanour smacks of a soul meaning serious business.

Hampstead Highgate Express • 30th May 2018

Music Festival Review: All Points East

Resplendently sat upon the spot that usually houses London festival stalwart Field Day, All Points East crashed into Victoria Park with a young pup’s brash fearlessness: primed and ready to grab the capital by the lapels to kickstart the festival season.

Skiddle.com • 28th May 2018

All Points East 2019 The Strokes review

It has been opined often that guitar music is ailing to the point where recovery appears unlikely - almost as though it might as well have a DNR sign hanging by its bed as it lies prostrate in music’s equivalent of an ICU.

Islington Gazette • 9th March 2017

Singer Nuria Graham: ‘A musician’s job now is about more than music’

Her songs are laced with a delicate beauty undercut with a seductive, urgent atmosphere and now with a headline show at The Lexington on March 16, Spanish singer-songwriter Nuria Graham heads to London to share the music that has been causing ripples in her homeland.

SupaJam • 3rd June 2015

Primavera Sound 2015 round-up: the winners, the losers and the best of the rest

Amid the vibrant streets of the Catalan capital of Spain, Primavera Sound has closed shop. It will have cleaned up its plastic pint glass-covered paving and coiled up its final microphone cable. It will no doubt (still) be nursing a hangover from celebrations that marked fifteen years since its genesis. The celebrations were big. The celebrations were special. By all accounts, according to festival veterans (this writer isn’t one; testimony came from his company), this was a vintage year.

SupaJam • 17th September 2014

Gregory Porter at the iTunes Festival 2014

Initially, at the very least, I’m going to make this personal. I don’t usually. As a rule, I like the third person. I’m going to break this rule because, for a review of a jazz gig, it feels appropriate to turn the lights down low and make it more of an intimate affair.