Pop

TV on the Radio - Dear Science

2 Oct 2008

POP Since they first sneaked into view five years ago, throwing down doo-wop takes on Pixies tunes and post-MBV space funk, TV on the Radio have been, to say the least, awkward customers, their sonic tricksiness often being a barrier to the enjoyment…

Velcro Quartet

18 Sep 2008

GLAM POP Many fine young Scots bands are already lined-up to play The Mill, Miller beer’s new branding doohickey come weekly live gig in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and The List can report it’s actually a pretty good night out. The bands are well-chosen…

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun

18 Sep 2008

POP There’s no disputing Brian Wilson’s genius – Beach Boy’s classic Pet Sounds is proof alone – and it’s wonderful to have him back from his self-imposed exile; performing live (particularly his joyous set at T in the Park in 2007) and releasing…

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

18 Sep 2008

POP Lewis is a sultry indie poster girl with Rilo Kiley and delivered a beautifully moving country record, backed by The Watson Twins, two years ago. This second solo album lacks the focus of those projects, but it’s still a cut above the average…

Platinum Pied Pipers to play rescheduled Edinburgh date

5 Sep 2008

Detroit-based hip hop and R&B group the Palatinum Pied Pipers play at Edinburgh's Voodoo Rooms on Monday 15th September. Promoting their new album Abundance, PPP take a soul-based foundation and mash it up with their array of vintage & modern…

A Band Called Quinn - Sun Moon Stars

3 Jul 2008

INDIE POP (Tromolo) Boasting a guest guitarist spot from Echo and the Bunnymen’s Gordy Goudie, a chrome and polish from Parisian producer Kid Loco and delightful artwork care of Bruno Gallagher, this industrious Glasgow trio’s latest offering is an…

Beck - Modern Guilt

3 Jul 2008

POP (XL Recordings) Beck seems to have found his mojo over the last few albums, the self-conscious idea of him being an ‘artist’ is gone and he lets the ideas flow. Modern Guilt is as sharp, clean and crisp a record as you’ll find, a compact, focussed…

Leon Jean Marie - Bent Out of Shape

3 Jul 2008

POP (Island Records) This talented Londoner must collect up a helluva lot of artists inside his dreadlocked head to conjure up such interesting pop brilliance. Leon’s inspired opener forecasts the outrageously catchy hooks which lie ahead on his…

Lykke Li - Youth Novels

3 Jul 2008

EXPERIMENTAL POP (LL Recordings) Every now and again a new artist pops up that’s captivating, edgy and touching all at the same time; Lykke Li (pronounced Licky-Lee) is all of these things. The album, produced by Björn Yttling (of Peter, Björn and…

Sharleen Spiteri - Melody

3 Jul 2008

BLUE-EYED SOUL-POP (Mercury Records) What’s the difference between Glasgow act Texas and its frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri? If listening to the latter’s debut solo album is any clue: very little. Wearing her Dusty Springfield influences proudly on her…

Sergeant

19 Jun 2008

ROCK/POP King Tut’s, Glasgow, Fri 20 Jun ‘I wasn’t prepared for the sublime genius of Sergeant,’ says Alan McGee, who believes the Glenrothes band is carrying on a great tradition of perfectly-crafted sunny Scottish pop songs. ‘They have that slight…

Avril Lavigne

19 Jun 2008

POP Carling Academy, Glasgow, Mon 26 May It took a while for her to finally make her entrance (the audience was kept waiting outside for an hour) but the eventual return of Canada’s most clean living rock’n’roller to a Glasgow stage was well worth…

Leon Jean Marie - Bent Out of Shape

19 Jun 2008

POP (Island Records) This talented Londoner must listen to many an artist in his dreadlocked head to conjure up such interesting pop brilliance. Leon’s inspired opener forecasts the outrageously catchy hooks which lie ahead on his daring, eclectic…

Padded Cell & Cut Copy

19 Jun 2008

NO-WAVE ELECTRO/ELECTRONIC POP Optimo, Sub Club, Glasgow, Sun 22 & Sun 29 Jun If you like going out in Glasgow on a Sunday night and were born with any taste at all, you’ll know all about Optimo. Do we need to tell you yet again why we love it so?

Sheryl Crow

19 Jun 2008

Perhaps not the chart force she was back in 1994 with ‘All I Wanna Do’, but Sheryl Crow has grown, and now provides a more mature and considered take on American pop with a heavy country slant. Not surprising that her music has grown in scope and pathos…

Jens Lekman - live music review

5 Jun 2008

INDIE POP Oran Mor, Glasgow, Thu 15 May Modern pop is rarely as smart, affecting or plain funny as when it’s in the hands of Jens Lekman. Nor as succinct. ‘No encore, 11 songs, all hits,’ proclaimed the Swede at the start of his set, tongue lodged…

The Chap - live music review

5 Jun 2008

ART POP Limbo@The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 1 May ‘In case you didn’t realise,’ deadpans Chap bassist Panos Ghikas, ‘all our songs are about pleasure.’ Well, blow me down with a showroom dummy, who’da thunk it? Because this pan-global North…

Santogold

22 May 2008

‘I’m trying to fix pop,’ proclaims Santi White (aka Santogold) with an impish laugh. ‘It’s broken.’ If anyone is qualified to take their toolkit to the genre, it probably is White. A music industry veteran of over ten years, she’s seen the business…

Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head

22 May 2008

COUNTRY POP (ATCO) To consider the pedigree of actors turned musicians is to consider a whole bunch of people walking the line between self-indulgence and inpsiration: David Soul, Richard Harris, Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Robert Downey…

The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing

22 May 2008

POP (Columbia) Salford duo The Ting Tings have been a buzz band recently, and this debut partially fulfils that potential. Conforming to today’s obligatory itunes-friendly frontloading of the album with hits, they blow their wad early, the insanely…

Ladytron

8 May 2008

Cool electronic pop as Ladytron once more stride into the live arena, testing the waters before the release of new album Velocifero in early June. Effortlessly crossing the club/live divide they’re in demand as DJs and musicians, even going on to remix…

Madonna - Hard Candy

8 May 2008

POP (Warner Bros) While acts much younger than her construct entire careers around trading on former glories, Madonna clearly doesn’t give two figs for nostalgia. Eleven albums on and pop’s most famous magpie and queen of reinvention is as sonically…

The Heavy Circles - The Heavy Circles

8 May 2008

ROCK/POP (Dynamite Child) Twenty years after the funky quirks of ‘What I Am’, Edie Brickell’s voice retains its girlish appeal: dreamy soaring, slacker tantrums and all. This time round, though, it’s her husband Paul Simon’s son Harper who is setting…

Adele

24 Apr 2008

POP Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 26 Apr Nineteen-year-old South Londoner Adele has some big shoes to fill. Already being hailed as ‘the New Queen of British Soul’ and ‘the New Amy Winehouse’, she bagged the Critics Choice prize at the Brit awards…

IAMX

24 Apr 2008

ELECTRO-GOTHIC POP King Tut’s, Glasgow, Mon 31 Mar ‘Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!’ The Deutsch kitsch musical number from Cabaret is the perfect aural backdrop for IAMX (the demonic brainchild of ex-Sneaker Pimp Chris Corner) to take to the stage.

Juno!

24 Apr 2008

BAGGY POP Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 10 Apr The MySpace of this buoyant Caledonian quartet has them listed as originating in Glasgow, Fife and Tokyo – the first two are true – but the jokey addition at the end would be better changed to…

Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple

10 Apr 2008

POP (Warner Bros) The completely addictive nature of their debut single ‘Crazy’ set the bar just a tad high for Danger Mouse and Cee-lo Green (for they are Gnarls Barkley). The chances of lightning striking twice was remote but they’ve shown their…

Estelle - Shine

27 Mar 2008

R&B POP (Atlantic/Homeschool) Estelle has paid her dues on the UK R&B circles before departing stateside. A meeting with US R&B star John Legend led to her signing to his Homeschool stable and this, her second album is executive produced by…

A Toys Orchestra - Technicolor Dreams

13 Mar 2008

ROCK POP (Urtovox) Written rule in music number 14: Europeans of the continental type make horrible, horrible pop music. Of course, there are a few examples which dilute this tenet (ABBA and, um, A-ha?). And when it comes to Italians and pop, you can…

Duffy - Rockferry

13 Mar 2008

POP (Polydor) This young Welsh songbird is certainly no Dusty Springfield, nor does she have the grit and sass of Amy Winehouse, but while she may struggle to live up to recent hysterical media comparisons, Rockferry proves that Duffy is still a…

Ivor Cutler - The Flat Man

13 Mar 2008

POP (Hoorgi House) When Ivor Cutler died in 2006 aged 83 a little piece of British culture died too, never to return. Celebrated by many as Scotland’s alternative poet laureate, his talents as a writer, poet, songsmith, humorist were like no other…

The B-52s - Funplex

13 Mar 2008

SURF POST-PUNK POP (EMI) ‘I look at you and I’m ready to pump,’ declares the very first lyric of Funplex. Smutty, puerile, silly or all of the above, it makes at least one thing instantly clear: The B-52s are back. It’s 16 years since Athens…

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree

28 Feb 2008

POP (Mute) For a woman who has done so much unashamed musical thievery in her time that she would put a gang of Pollock shoplifters to shame, Alison Goldfrapp has always been a bewitching character. In her efforts to distinguish herself from the…

Kate Nash

28 Feb 2008

One of the massive success stories of 2007, Kate Nash crowned off the year picking up a Best Female Solo Artist BRIT just the other week. And while it’s easy to deride her heavy mockney delivery you can’t dismiss the catchy nature of ‘Foundations’ or…

Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

28 Feb 2008

FOLK POP (4AD) While it might be cruel to say that John Darnielle and his Mountain Goats might be trying for a kind of Sufjan Stevens vibe but end up a bit too Jasper Carrott for comfort, that’s still the overriding impression given by Heretic Pride.

Surrounded - The Nautilus Years

28 Feb 2008

POP (One Little Indian) Surrounded, we are told, are ‘Sweden’s answer to The Flaming Lips.’ It’s a distinct possible that never a truer statement has been typed onto a music press release and while this is fine up to a point, that point arrives rather…

Adele - 19

14 Feb 2008

POP (XL) Much is made these days of the ‘voice’. Joss Stone, if you remember, had one; Corinne Bailey Rae still has hers; why, wasn’t even the bland and affected Katie Mellua touted as being in the possession of such a thing? The newest voice on the…

Pop survivor Kylie Minogue

Celebrity Gossip

30 Jan 2008

Kylie Minogue never considered retiring after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Stars

17 Jan 2008

POP Oran Mor, Glasgow, Sun 27 Jan Stars describe their music as ‘melodramatic popular song’, an accurate if tongue-in-cheek description of the grandly-monikered In Our Bedroom After the War, released last year. But Stars’ emotional rawness and…

James Blunt

4 Jan 2008

Some stories you just couldn’t make up. The tale of young Blunt going from armed forces orderly to supermodel serial dater is one you couldn’t make up. The secret behind his ascension into the upper echelons of international stardom? Those songs. The…

Kevin McDermott - Wise to the Fade

4 Jan 2008

POP Wise to the Fade (Spinney) Having been in the biz since the early 80s and witnessed the inexorable rise of the corporate mindset, you’d think Scots muso Kevin McDermott would have shot his bolt long ago. But no, he’s still making his mark whether…

Abba - The Album

13 Dec 2007

POP (Polydor) If you’re tired of Abba, you’re tired of life, basically, so this deluxe re-issue of their most ambitious album is extremely welcome. Originally released in 1978 when the band were at their creative and commercial peak, The Album…

Girls Aloud - Tangled Up

29 Nov 2007

POP Tangled Up (Universal) First things first – there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. There is just good music and bad music, whether it be camp pop, pompous rock, electro-crunk, punk funk or the bizarre style now simply known as Rhydian.

Kylie – X

29 Nov 2007

POP X (Parlophone) On listening to Kylie’s tenth long player it wouldn’t be completely unfair to assume that a substantial portion of her adult fan base (like many Oasis fans) are more in love with the idea of Kylie than with the musical reality.

Spears pulls out of Timberlake duet

28 Aug 2007

US tabloids are claiming troubled singer Britney Spears has pulled out of recording a duet with former boyfriend Justin Timberlake. The song, which Timberlake supposedly wrote specifically for Spears, was set to be produced with mixer du jour…