Pop

The problem with Chappell Roan

There is a downside to being fast-tracked into the position of this season’s newest pop sensation, and it became more and more obvious the longer Chappell Roan’s self-proclaimed ‘biggest ever show’ went on. A freshly risen pop star promoting their debut album should, by law, be performing a 40-minute hit-and-run set in a sweaty club,

Britain’s loveliest, most thoughtful festival

The last weekend of August is my favourite of the year. That’s when I pootle down to Cranborne Chase to the loveliest, most thoughtful festival in the UK. End of the Road is a festival for those who look at TV coverage of Glastonbury and see only the size and the heaving crowds and come

In defence of Notting Hill Carnival

This isn’t going to be a piece celebrating the rich cultural tapestry of London’s Afro-Caribbean community, sombrely expressing the importance of preserving its heritage and history. I just like going to Carnival. I see it as an opportunity to make the most of the last dregs of the summer. I’ll meet my friends, dance to

The Seeds are primitive but magnificent

I have nothing but admiration for those men who burn a candle for the music of 1966. Partly because, like them, I believe 1966 to be pop’s greatest year, but mainly because being a psychedelic hipster requires a commitment that invites ridicule. It’s one thing to be an ageing fella who likes rock’n’roll – sharp

Ultimately hard to resist: Elbow reviewed

Our relationships with bands are often very like our relationships with people. Some are pure and lasting love. Some start promisingly but spoil. Some are quick, thrilling flings, others a more meaningful yet distant connection. Elbow are the kind of band you enjoy having a pint with every few months. Not always the most exciting

The terrifying charisma of Liam Gallagher

You’d have thought Wembley Stadium was a sportswear convention, so ubiquitous were the three stripes down people’s arms from all the Adidas merch: veni, vidi, adi. Pints drunk: 250,000 a night, apparently. All along the Metropolitan line pubs noted an Oasis dividend. At a corner shop, I was sold an official Oasis Clipper lighter. It’s

Why I don’t get the blues

The Louisiana bluesman Buddy Guy is releasing a new album this week. It is called Ain’t Done With The Blues – a statement which one might argue seems redundant considering Guy, who is 89, has been releasing albums with the word ‘blues’ in the title since 1967’s Left My Blues In San Francisco. Since then,

Magnificent: Stevie Wonder at BST Hyde Park reviewed

The highs of Stevie Wonder’s Hyde Park show were magnificently high. The vast band were fully clicked into that syncopated, swampy funk, horns stabbing through the synths, the backing singers adding gospel fervour. And Wonder – now 75 – sang like it was still the 1970s, his voice raspy one minute, angelic the next. Anyone

A delight: Sabrina Carpenter at BST Hyde Park reviewed

We all know, at heart, that economic theories of rational behaviour are rubbish. And that their application ruins so many areas of life. Football supporters, for example, are not ‘customers’; they are supporters. They are at the club before a new owner arrives, they remain there after that owner leaves. In the meantime, they do

Dua Lipa sparkles at Wembley – but her new album is pedestrian

If, as is said, there are only seven basic narratives in human storytelling, then there should be an addendum. In rock and pop there is only one: the dizzying rise, the imperial period, the fall from grace (either commercial or ethical, sometimes both), and the noble return (historically prefigured with a glossy music mag cover

Jarvis Cocker still has the voice – and the moves

For bands of a certain vintage, the art of keeping the show on the road involves a tightly choreographed dance between past and present, old and new, then and now. It’s not a one-way transaction: there should be some recognition that the people you are playing to have also evolved since the glory years of

The charm of Robbie Williams

What could it possibly feel like to be a sportsperson who gets the yips? To wake up one morning and be unable to replicate the technical skills that define you. To suddenly find the thing you do well absolutely impossible. Golfers who lose their swing, cricketers whose bowling deserts them, snooker players who can’t sink

Compelling: Little Simz’s Lotus reviewed

It is not uncommon for (predominantly male) music critics to invert the ‘great man/great woman’ dictum in order to suggest that behind the success of every powerful female artist there simply must be a moustache-twirling Svengali pulling the strings. It’s less common for the artist themselves to pose the question. On ‘Lonely’, the penultimate track

We’ve underestimated Francis Rossi

I have a friend who insists that had Status Quo hailed from Düsseldorf rather than Catford, they would nowadays be as critically revered as Can, Faust, Neu! and those other hallowed Teutonic pioneers of unyielding rhythm from the 1970s. Maybe so. Very probably not. Canned Heat and ZZ Top seem more reachable comparisons. But it’s

I think I’ve found the new Van Morrison

Young male singers won the right to be sensitive in 1963, when The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was released. And in the 63 years since, being young and vulnerable and questing has been one of the great default settings. I’d say you can’t go far wrong singing sadly about your feelings, but of course you can,