Film. TV. Music. Comics. Reviews and Analyses.
Licorice Pizza is a 2021 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It stars Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman in their film debuts, alongside an ensemble cast including Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, and Benny Safdie. The movie has generally been well-received, having been nominated in the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
(more…)
This Best David Bowie Albums listicle is probably one of the best ways we could think of to celebrate Bowie’s 75th birthday. We wanted to share personal reflections on these albums and thus limited the selection to five stone cold classics. in our humble opinion. Also, we bit the bullet and ordered this list according to merit. Here goes nothing….
(more…)
The Beatles Get Back is a 2021 music documentary series directed and produced by Peter Jackson. It covers the making of the Beatles’ 1970 album Let It Be, which had the working title of Get Back, and draws from material originally captured for Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary of the Let It Be album. The series was released in three parts on Disney+ over the Thanksgiving holidays 2021.
(more…)
FUR When You Walk Away
Fur is a British rock band based in Brighton and is intent on recapturing the Britpop excellence of The Beatles, The Kinks, The Jam and Blur. When You Walk Away represents the band’s first full-length album after a series of well-received EPs and singles.
(more…)
The Verve Pipe is an American rock band from Michigan. It was formed in 1992 in East Lansing by Brian Vander Ark, Brian Stout and Donny Brown. Threads is the band’s latest album and contains the usual melodic rock that fans have grown accustomed to in its almost three decades’ history.
(more…)
The Best Queen Songs of All Time functions – as usual – as our introduction to the music of legendary pop-rock band, Queen. Queen rose out of the ashes of Smile – which Brian May (guitar) and Roger Taylor (drums) formed in university – with Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano) and John Deacon (bass) joining the line-up in 1970 and 1971 respectively.
(more…)
The Best ELO Songs of All Time is our concise introduction to the music of the Electric Light Orchestra (aka ELO). The Electric Light Orchestra was formed in 1970 by songwriters-multi-instrumentalists Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood with drummer Bev Bevan. The band was effectively spun out from the final incarnation of the 1960s psych-rock band The Move.
(more…)
Steely Dan – Aja is the first to be featured in our new (hopefully) regular feature of classic album reviews. Of course, as usual, what qualifies as a classic album is a matter of opinion and typically, I will highlight albums that I have listened to quite a fair bit in order to ultimately arrive at this particular specific assessment.
(more…)
In my recent opinion piece on music appreciation, I opined that music has become less time sensitive in the new media age. So I am starting a new music feature to highlight recommended new (mainly) pop-rock albums on a post-monthly basis. So here it is – Recommended Albums (September 2020). Check them out!
(more…)
Since I reviewed his 2017 album, Something/Nothing, English singer-songwriter Nick Frater has been keeping up a steady yearly release schedule with Goodbye Kayfabe (2018), Full Fathom Freight-Train (2019) and his latest Fast & Loose this year. The self-described ‘60s/70s inspired power-pop’ specialist is determinedly prolific, by all accounts.
(more…)
I’ll be honest. This new album from The Neighbourhood shook me to the core. Now, this is a proper pop album. Not the shitty 2nd-rate lazy hip-pop that is popular nowadays but an old-school pop album. But with 2020 pop sensibilities. How did this happen?
(more…)
A review of Bill Lloyd – Working the Long Game.
Bill Lloyd returns with a smart new album that will appeal to the PoP Faithful with its sophisticated take on Power Pop Rock N Roll. Lloyd is a Nashville based songwriter, musician, recording artist and producer who is most often remembered as half of the late ‘80’s RCA country-rock duo, Foster and Lloyd.
(more…)
Lost within the hype, attention and brouhaha over the 50th anniversary re-issue of The Beatles “White Album”, is First Collection 2006 – 2009, a retrospective on the early Fleet Foxes recordings.
After the success of last year’s Sgt Pepper remix reissue, this 50th anniversary edition of my favourite Beatles album was the one to look out for!
Seattle new wave revivalists Spirit Award are back with a new album, Muted Crowd.
It’s impossible to be objective about Bohemian Rhapsody as I have been a Queen fan since 1977.
A rare thing indeed to come across a pop song that addresses the social issues of Singapore but Shannon Luke has done exactly that with his latest single, “The Survey”.
Photo credit : James Omara
EC fans received a bit of a scare after the singer-songwriter cancelled a clutch of live dates due to ill health. But news of his recovery and the release of Look Now – one of Costello’s best albums of recent times – must have cheered diehard followers!
There is a pleasing new wave of music artists taking the bold step of making ‘real’ music again. The old-fashioned way, so to speak. Like Texas-based singer-songwriter Molly Burch.
In 2018, retro pop rock still has relevance though probably not for millennials and younger generations. But it matters not. I know that the PoP Faithful will enjoy these releases. Good enough!
Songwriting duo Scott McPherson and Jamie Grant present a debut album that lives up to its name.
Continuing our lookback at our publishing history with a decade-old review of Brass Bed!
BRASS BED Midnight Matinee (Self released)
I’m guessing that Brass Bed got their name from Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay but I could be wrong.
Mention Styx online and chances are you are going to be trolled. But for a time, the pop-rock quintet were one of the biggest bands on the planet.
The moment one gets into Ken Sharp’s latest album, Beauty in the Backseat, one is transported back to the ’70s, where pop-rock was king of the airwaves.
Once again, Bittersweet Machines (a.k.a. Matt Mocharnuk) delivers another potent shot of melodic adrenaline infused with 80s pop-rock sensibilities of the highest order!