album by album

Those stumbling upon Best Friend – a Supremes-like tune late in this compilation of the Scottish collective’s three recent EPs – might be forgiven for thinking the band are stuck…

If, from time to time, Turin Brakes have previously appeared a little whey-faced, the quartet tackle that straight away with their eighth album’s opening track, the thrusting Would You Be…

If Steve Martin can make banjo albums, and Hugh Laurie can play the blues, there’s no reason John Oates – of blue-eyed soul duo Hall & Oates – can’t make…

How different the world might be if, when original singer Stephen Holt left to form The Rainkings in 1989, roadie Noel Gallagher had landed the job of Inspiral Carpets’ frontman.…

Geowulf – yet another Australian band who’ve headed, Dick Whittington-style, to London to find fame, fortune, and pavements lined with gold and gum – are not, as their name might…

“All I’ve got is a red guitar, three chords, and the truth,” Bono announced on Rattle & Hum, borrowing a phrase from country music’s Harlan Howard. Judging from his latest…

Rupert Holmes is a British- American tunesmith largely remembered – or despised – for his somewhat anomalous 1979 hit single, Escape (The Piña Colada Song), probably because listeners assumed he…

Flesh For Lulu were a bunch of South Londoners who, in the 80s and early-90s, specialised in new wave pop-rock with a hint of glam, all dressed up in the…

“I don’t care about you,” former Kaiser Chief Nick Hodgson confesses early on this solo album, “But I’m trying to get you to smile.” How noble that is, though in…