Thrust into the spotlight with their unique take on a soul classic, the Soft Cell debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret delved deep into dive bars, seedy S&M clubs and porno cinemas,…
Classic Album: Steve McQueen – Prefab Sprout
A new lease of life for songs lost to the bedroom, two brothers with Michael Jackson-sized ambitions, and a synth-pop pioneer at the controls – these were the ingredients necessary…
Review: UNKLE – The Road Part II: Lost Highway
Mo’Wax founder James Lavelle’s back again with a cameo-laden sequel to 2017’s similarly cameo-laden fifth studio album, except this time it’s double the length, leading one to wonder, since it’s…
Reissue Review: Various Artists – Birth Of A Nation – Inevitable Records: An Independent Liverpool 1979-1986
It never attracted the acclaim or profile of a Factory or Postcard, but Inevitable Records was a valuable conduit for Liverpool indie music in the late 1970s and early 1980s.…
Reissue Review: Various Artists – Now That’s What I Call Music II
Now That’s What I Call Music I was reissued with much fanfare late last year to coincide with Now 100, but the second album in the series arguably deserves more…
Toyah Interview: ‘I’m not boasting, but I’m an athlete on stage’
After more than 40 years in the music business, Toyah Willcox is as creatively hungry as she was in her teens. Classic Pop chats to the high priestess of punk…
Reissue Review: R.E.M. The Best Of R.E.M. – In Time 1988–2003
The finest that Athens, Georgia, has to offer deserve a definitive career-spanning Best Of. Sadly, this isn’t it… R.E.M.’s precipitous late-1980s ascent into the rock stratosphere was a charming, off-kilter…
Reissue Review: Spear of Destiny – The Albums 1983-85
William Blake famously observed that the fool who persists in his folly shall become wise. Pouting peroxide post-punk Kirk Brandon represented a pretty stiff challenge to that weighty maxim. Brandon’s…
The complete guide to Japan and David Sylvian
Inspired by glam and myopically lumped in with the New Romantics because of a proclivity for cosmetics, Japan were always more art than pop. They quit after five albums, reunited…
2 Tone Records Interview: 40 Years of 2 Tone Records
With its message of unity, 2 Tone burned bright as the embers of punk faded and offered hope to a generation lost. Forty years on from its inception, Classic Pop…