Who wouldn’t accuse Lenny Kravitz of showing off upon hearing him sing, halfway through his 11th album: “Just hold me like Johnny Cash/ When I lost my mother”? He is,…
Review: Dubstar – One
When lined up alongside the Britpop acts of their era, there was something a bit different about Dubstar. Stars first scraped into the Top 40 a month before the infamous…
Review: Pet Shop Boys – Behaviour / Very / Bilingual: Further Listening
These three reissues – plus extras – covering the Pet Shop Boys’ 1990s output prove that we should take their post-imperial phase seriously… In the pre-fame days, when he was…
Review: Prince – Piano & A Microphone 1983
Two years after his premature death, the first album to emerge from his legendary vault finds Prince as we last saw him on tour: alone with his piano There was,…
Review: Steven Jones & Logan Sky – The Electric Eye
As with Hans Und Lieselotte, released earlier this year, The Electric Eye finds Logan Sky (keyboardist in Visage’s final line-up) and Steven Jones further refining their once unmodified penchant for…
Review: The Internet – Hive Mind
“A notional entity consisting of a large number of people who share their knowledge or opinions with one another, regarded as producing… collective intelligence.” So states the Oxford English Dictionary…
Review: Jake Shears – Jake Shears
Listening to his solo debut’s opening track – cunningly titled Introduction – it would be easy to assume that Jake Shears’ goal was to pursue the same instincts that led…
Review: Morrissey – This Is Morrissey
Morrissey’s cancelling last month of his UK and European tour to promote last year’s Low In High School album was a fresh nadir for an artist whose career has, for…
Review: Various Artists – Now That’s What I Call Music! 1
The original Now! album weaned a whole generation off recording pop songs from the Sunday evening Radio 1 countdown Admittedly it wasn’t the first but it went on to become the…
Review: Gorillaz – The Now Now
There’s a peculiarly English criticism that’s often been levelled at Damon Albarn: “Too clever for his own good.” Its roots lie in the belief that somebody who thinks they know…