(via Shutterstock) The week’s end ushers in a host of tracks, well, five to be precise, and they’re a great way to take a weight off all the accumulated stress the working week has visited upon us. There’s something liberating, even when your nerves are on edge and your body Continue Reading
Music
Songs, songs and more songs #144: RAYE/Amma/Absolutely, Sam Quealy + The Bloody Beetroots, MILEY, hemlocke springs and K.Flay … plus new Troye Sivan single
(via Shutterstock) You want music that makes you leap with joy right? Right. But sometimes a little ragey edge, depending on your mood is necessary. Of course. And that at other times, you wany epic cinematic sensations or club-ready anthems. We are complicated, contrary and changeable beings and thankfully there Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #143: half•alive, Mitch Tambo, Logic1000, Priyanka & Lemon + Ladyhawke
(via Shutterstock) There’s something about just the right song that can lift a mood or soothe the soul or simply make you feel lighter and airier than life is allowing for at a given time. Honestly, I can’t fathom how you can possibly get through life without music soundtracking the Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #142: Rose Gray, Violet Days, Slayyyter, almost monday + Cherry Bomb … plus ABBA’s most and least streamed songs
(via Shutterstock) Songs are made to make us feel something, the more emphatically the better. Whether it’s the music or the lyrics or a delicious combo of the two, the right song can make you feel, think, move and look at life, or at least a part of it, from Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #141: Jain, daine, ANAÏS MVA, hemlocke springs + Snow Patrol & Kylie Minogue
(via Shutterstock) Pop which gives your ears a happy burst of musical escapism are always welcome. Even better though is when those slice of transportive musical delight come with lyrics which say something profound and which mean something real and relatable; marrying the two isn’t for everyone but for the Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #140: mustbejohn, LILY B, HRVY, Sabyna + marguerite … check out Snow Patrol & Kylie Minogue’s These Alarms video
(via Shutterstock) Life has a lot of dark shit going on right now. Climate change, AI menace, global fascistic machinations and bird flu are just four of the things making 2026 feel like a complete and utter buzzkill, and so, we need things that remind that life be uplifting and Continue Reading
ABBA’s Dancing Queen at 50: why we’ve spent half a century having the time of our lives (curated article)
(My original copy of the “Dancing Queen” single from 1976) Fifty years ago, Swedish pop sensation ABBA released their single “Dancing Queen”. It reached number one in 15 countries, from Australia to the US, to Norway and South Africa. Five decades later it’s still riding the airwaves, being belted out Continue Reading
Christmas in July music review redux: The Holiday Sounds of Josh Rouse
This review was first published on 18 December 2019. When it comes to summoning up the sounds, and more pertinently for this review, the sounds of Christmas, there is an understandably heavy bias towards evoking the sensibilities of a cold and cosy northern hemisphere Christmas. Thanks most notably to the Continue Reading
Christmas in July music review redux: Put Up Your Lights by The Bird and the Bee
If anyone can make something beautiful out of something chaotic and terrible, it is the mesmerisingly good duo that is The Bird and the Bee, made up of singer Inara George and producer Greg Kurstin. Their latest collaboration, Put Your Lights Up was put together during a year when a Continue Reading
Christmas in July redux: Music review: Snow Waltz by Lindsey Stirling
This review was first published 9 December 2022. Christmas is supposed to be a thousand good and wonderfully light-as-air, joyously uplifting things. And while it often is – all that tree trimming, laughing with friends and brightness of decoration can only make you feel like a million festive bucks – Continue Reading