Music

  It has been one of those weeks where I got a dreadful cold and didn’t do much besides sleeping, reading, and eating of comfort foods. So my choice of songs is resting heavily on music I heard last week. But hey they’re great songs and I would like to Continue Reading

  Die Tote Stadt, by feted composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, which fell into obscurity for much of the 20th century after it was banned during the Nazi regime to Korngold’s Jewish ancestry, is one of those operas that is immediately accessible and attractive to anyone without a natural predilection for Continue Reading

Another Tuesday and yes I hear you, Monday has taken it’s toll and you’ve arrived at one of those oddly pointless days of the week – not the beginning, not halfway through and not the blessed TGIF we all love. So here are 5 wonderful songs I have collected on Continue Reading

Malmö! Yes Malmö has won the three way “contest” between the capital Stockholm, Gothenberg in the west of Sweden, and itself. The city’s Hartwall Arena, which houses 15,500, considerably less than Baku’s Crystal Hall, will play host to Europe’s annual festival of song. Found in 1275 when that part of Sweden Continue Reading

If you have read anything on this blog before, it will have become mighty obvious that I am not exactly fresh out of high school. Not that I am eyeing up a glittery red Zimmer frame to buy with all the fervency of teenage girls spotting Justin Bieber, but I Continue Reading

  The first thing that strikes you about this superlative album from 21st century Canadian rockers, Metric, is the otherworldly aura that permeates every one of its almost pop songs. (They were founded in 1998 in Toronto but their first album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? came in Continue Reading

One of the great dilemmas of loving such a broad cross section of music, and hence the many amazingly talented artists who populate each one in their own distinctive way, is how to choose what to listen to next. The budget and my time stretches only so far… of course Continue Reading

The world’s most beloved purveyors of ska pop are back with a new album produced by pop god, Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, Push and Shove (out September 25), a single to kick things off, “Settle Down” (released July 16, with a video, directed by the uber-talented Sophie Muller who was at Continue Reading

OK confession #1 : I lived through ALL of the 1970s. Confession # 2: And in that time, I either listened to Evie and Nana Mouskouri (ask my parents about those choices please) or ABBA (obsessively; this one was entirely my choice) or in the latter part of the decade, Continue Reading

Now that the glitter-strewn waters of Eurovision have ebbed, and taken with them their bright shiny pieces of Europop (although they do linger with no complaints from me), there is room for other music to emerge and haunt my iPod. Here are the tunes that surged with Darwinian-determination to the Continue Reading