music
Saturday, November 15, 2025
I went to see Laurie Anderson at the Roundhouse in London last week, and it was an incredible show - galvanising and deeply moving in equal measure. The Ugly One With The Jewels is my favourite Laurie Anderson record, for how it presents her practice in its most distilled form: strange, funny, haunting stories that reveal an undeniable truth even as the meaning slips out of your grasp.
Erik Hall’s ongoing project to record the canon of minimalism by himself shows an admirable commitment to the bit: Music For 18 Musicians (performed by one); Music For A Large Ensemble (solo).
Continue reading →
Saturday, November 8, 2025
The lovely new claire rousay record is a return to her trademark palette of quotidian sounds, conversational snippets and ambient washes, to a degree that might appear formulaic if it wasn’t so emotionally affecting. The magic of her music lies in the sense that you’re never quite sure what she’s up to, only that she’s doing it with astonishing precision.
Every six months or so, I text my friend Gareth a Bandcamp link with the caption “Is electroclash back?
Continue reading →
Saturday, November 1, 2025
I spent last Saturday at the Gob Nation all-dayer at the Tuffnell Park Dome, and loved it. Spike’s self-titled EP is one of my favourites of 2025, and her live show suggest there’s even better songs to come; my favourite discovery of the days was trash-punk duo Grazia.
People rarely talk about Greatest Hits albums in the age of the playlist, but Warren Zevon’s makes an incredible case for his singularity: these songs are packed with highly detailed Cold War intrigue, they’re full of pathos, and they’re incredibly funny.
Continue reading →
Friday, October 24, 2025
Here are some records I’ve listened to over the last week.
The most interesting thing about my relationship with Bob Dylan’s music is that I’ve hitherto managed to avoid having a relationship with Bob Dylan’s music, and only recently thought about starting one. I’m listening to his early albums alongside the Never Ending Stories podcast’s excellent Do Look Back mini-series on this period, as a way of getting to grips with a body of work I mainly know through cultural osmosis.
Continue reading →