Music, Pop
- Filtered by:
- Music
- Reviews
- Previews
- Hitlist
- Records
- Classical
- Country
- Electronic
- Folk
- World
- Jazz
- Blues
- Metal
- Opera
- Rock
- Pop
- Exposure
- Hip hop
1,611 articles
Sorted by popularity / date
Django Django - Django Django
27 Jan 2012
Dense and often surprising debut spitting up bursts of bold, spaced-out texture
(Because) Django Django’s debut has a lot of strings to its bow. It benefits from being the result of prolonged and measured tinkering by three Edinburgh art school grads over the space of a couple of years in a London bedroom. These efforts have…
RM Hubbert launches album Thirteen Lost & Found with friends
6 Jan 2012
Aidan Moffat, Alex Kapranos and more to join in at Stereo show
RM Hubbert’s debut album First & Last was more than just an instrumental record by a talented Glaswegian guitarist. Far from a commercial stepping-stone, the record was rather the result of Hubbert’s attempts to document a tumultuous three-year period…
Malcolm Middleton - Electric Circus, Edinburgh, Wed 14 Dec
6 Jan 2012
The ex-Arab Strap man isn't as miserable as he makes out
What better way to celebrate Christmas than with Mr Season of Goodwill himself, Malcolm Middleton, the man whose campaign to get ‘We’re All Going to Die’ to the 2007 Christmas number one spot will live long in the hearts of those who believed in it.
Exposure: Still Corners
1 Feb 2012
Cinematic dream-pop with a Lynchian vibe
The whispery female vocal, the unsettling tone, the shoegazey guitars... There’s a very cinematic, 1990s David Lynch feel to the heavenly dream-pop of London-based Still Corners. The List finds singer Tessa Murray and songwriter Greg Hughes drinking…
Azari & III - Azari & III
1 Feb 2012
Credit due delivering a straightforward house music manifesto with compelling four-to-the-floor forc
(Island) This self-titled debut is actually a major label re-release of an album that, until recently, was widely available as an import – including on Spotify. It’s getting a reboot in the UK in CD form (you remember CDs right?) though really the…
Palace - Domino reissue several albums from Will Oldham project
1 Feb 2012
There is No-one What Will Take Care Of You/ Days In The Wake/ Hope/ Viva Last Blues/ Lost Blues And
(Domino) Before he cast himself as Bonnie Prince Billy, Kentuckian alt-folk heartbreaker Will Oldham recorded several exquisite, distinguished long-players under the Palace moniker. After aeons in the hard-to-find wilderness, they will be…
GFF 2012 - Silver Apples set for Glasgow Music and Film Festival
27 Jan 2012
Live set from the cult 60s space rock pioneers
When Simeon Coxe III took a 1940s vintage oscillator onstage with him to liven up the psych-rock band he fronted, sparks flew to the extent that half the band left, and, with only drummer Danny Taylor in tow, Silver Apples were born. With their name…
The high energy, high concept dance-rock of Justice is French through-and-through
27 Jan 2012
To these new gods of French electronic music, we say Salut!
The hair; the crotch-hugging denim; the ‘tude - everything about Justice’s demeanour screams metal. And with good reason. The band, comprising Xavier de Rosnay (monobrow, flaired nostrils) and Gaspard Augé (hair of Robert Plant, moustache of a Deep…
Trailer Trash Tracys - Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Sun 15 Jan 2012
27 Jan 2012
Effects-laden shoegaze fog heavy on the exquisite melodrama
Not, as you might have expected from the name, a clan of bad-mouthin’, whisky-swillin’ Midwestern girls battering badly-tuned guitars and trying to resurrect the lost souls of L7 or The Distillers, Trailer Trash Tracys are instead three guys and a girl…
Real Estate set for UK tour
27 Jan 2012
New Jersey trio take one of the best albums of 2011 on the road
Let England Shake may have topped most of the critics’ lists, but for many it was word-of-mouth, you have to hear this, slow-burner Days by Real Estate that became their hands down musical highlight of 2011. This much-lauded record was an Ariel Pink…
The Twilight Sad set for UK tour
27 Jan 2012
Kilsyth trio take third album No One Can Ever Know on tour
With their third album No One Can Ever Know, masters of the dark side anthem The Twilight Sad add impressively to a catalogue that includes one of the finest Scottish debuts of recent years. It’s a bit of a surprise then to discover that the Kilsyth…
Howler - America Give Up
27 Jan 2012
The kind of easily-digestible festival fodder that could hit the spot live, but is dull on record
(Rough Trade) You think we would all have learned by now that it is frankly unproductive to call anything the ‘new this’, the ‘next that’, or, god forbid, ‘the hottest thing you’ll hear all year’. Sadly, whether they’re aware of it or not, young US…
Pulp - It/Freaks/Separations
27 Jan 2012
Reissue of first three albums from 1980s originally released on Fire
(Fire) Testament to the 80s’capacity to incubate provincial bands until they’re ready for megastardom, Pulp’s first three albums on Fire were a career’s worth in themselves, although hardly anyone remembers. Containing, as all three of these reissues…
Partikel - Cohesion
27 Jan 2012
Trio’s flexible, responsive interplay maintains interest in material a little samey at times
(Whirlwind Recordings) From the same label, Partikel are a London-based saxophone trio led by Duncan Eagles, with Max Luthert on bass and Eric Ford on drums. Sonny Rollins probably remains the most famous exemplar of the challenges and rewards of the…
Emeli Sande - Our Version Of Events
24 Jan 2012
Powerful, sophisticated and smart mix of stripped down, acoustic songs
(Virgin) Just imagine it, Adele and Emeli Sandé down the pub, putting the world to rights over copious pints. Men? Screw ’em. Hype? Whatever. But the main reason they’d make great gal pals is because they’ve both worked out ways to channel their…
School of Seven Bells - Ghostory
24 Jan 2012
Third album from New York electro-phantoms, now a duo
(Full Time Hobby) Ghostory – geddit? It’s the way in which our histories are colonised by ghosts. It’s the way in which persons come to haunt our tales of yore. It’s the third album from New York electro-phantoms SVIIB. At best, it is euphoric – all…
The Ting Tings - Sounds From Nowheresville
23 Jan 2012
Second album a mixed bag containing glimpses of what makes them fun
(Columbia) Pity the poor Ting Tings. After selling millions of records, the Mancunian electro-pop duo got stressed, scrapped a whole album and hid from their record label. Allegedly. You can see why the pair might worry about following We Started…
Lambchop - Mr M
23 Jan 2012
Reassembled band present lovely low-key set recalling Sinatra, Bacharach and crooners
(City Slang) Having taken a break from the long-lasting alt.country outfit (to collaborate with singer Cortney Tidwell on 2010’s KORT project), Lambchop founder and frontman Kurt Wagner has reassembled the Nashville-based band to make its 11th…
Preview of 2012 - Emeli Sandé
6 Jan 2012
The Scottish chart-topper aims to release a hit album in 2012
Whenever Emeli Sandé gets a chance to stop and think, she says, the journey she’s already been on in her life still has her pinching herself. ‘To think that three years ago I was sitting in a lecture theatre in Glasgow learning about anatomy,’ she says…
Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier to play Celtic Connections 2012
6 Jan 2012
Material from Sadier's solo album The Trip, plus Stereolab songs
In 2009, when Stereolab announced plans to go on indefinite hiatus, the group’s spectral-voiced singer Laetitia Sadier prepared for a life away from making music. Her other project, the pop quintet Monade, closed for business the same year. Suddenly…
Friendly Fires - Barrowland, Glasgow, Tue 20 Dec 2011
6 Jan 2012
Triumphant end of year show from the St Albans indie-ravers
2011 didn’t quite belong to Friendly Fires, as some had predicted it might, but they owned significant parts of it off the back of their euphoric second album Pala – not least the flying feet and skyward waving arms of a few summer festival crowds. The…
M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming combines ambient roots with pop sensibilities
6 Jan 2012
We reassess the albumprior to Frenchman's upcoming UK tour
The Associates’ Alan Rankine once opined that the best way to make an album is to ‘start with a climax, then go further.’ It’s a maxim that Frenchman Anthony Gonzalez – an Antibes-born, LA-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with an idiosyncratic…
Errors - Have Some Faith In Magic
6 Jan 2012
Superb third album that should push the foursome out of Mogwai's shadow
(Rock Action) Lazily regarded as Mogwai-lite for most of their seven year existence, Errors’ third offering finally sees the Glasgow foursome shrug off the shackles of their legendary label founders’ early patronage. Anyone with half a brain could…
Eat, sleep and breathe with Fránçois from Fránçois & the Atlas Mountains
6 Jan 2012
A questionnaire about food and the touring musician
Fránçois Marry is fuelled by a combination of herbal tea, techno, chocolate and Cognac – in varying quantities, depending on where the tour van is stopping that day... What time is breakfast? 7am at the hotel before a long drive. Tea or…
The View - O2 ABC, Glasgow, Mon 19 Dec
6 Jan 2012
Raucous, lager-soaked rock'n'roll show
Being partial to the occasional shandy, it pained The List to witness the mass lager sacrifice that occurred at the ABC this night – nary a punter was spared a shower of the gods’ amber nectar as high-spirited young souls sent pint after pint looping…
