Glam rock

The Last Dinner Party received quite the critical backlash when they arrived amid much fanfare in 2023. Posh, precocious and theatrical, armed with lofty ideas that matched their station as four young women who had benefited from very expensive educations, the band encountered widespread suspicion that they were industry ‘plants’, or had somehow bought their way to instant recognition. Happily, their debut album, Prelude To Ecstasy, proved sufficiently accomplished to repel these waves of hostility (strange how the success of privileged young women tends to attract far greater opprobrium than that of privileged young men). In any case, the excellence of the follow-up should settle the matter. Rougher around the

Slade in Flame was glam-rock band Slade’s first foray into film – and also their last. It was a flop on its release in 1975 and that would have been that, end of story, gone and forgotten, except it has been rediscovered in recent years, with critic Mark Kermode even hailing it as ‘the Citizen Kane of British pop movies’. That, I think, may be something of an overstatement but it’s still a highly watchable 90 minutes, does offer some banging tunes, and Noddy Holder, who plays the lead, does not embarrass himself on the acting front. (The other band members play lesser roles, perhaps mercifully.)  Newly remastered by the