Composed: songs about coolness

January 25, 2024 Peter Kimpton

Calm looks: from Beyoncé’s Lemonade:designs based on Yoruba culture by Brooklyn Nigeria-born designer Laolu Senbanjo

From Arican itutu to European sprezzatura, American jazz and poetry to hip hop, and a lot more besides, how do you define coolness, whether in lyrics, or expressed in the music itself? It’s time to compose yourselves with some cultural inspiration …

Warning signs: songs about tyranny and dictatorship

January 18, 2024 Peter Kimpton

Notorious, violent, controlling, paranoid, ruthless, and excessive, history is filled with them, their rise supported by the fear and apathy. Constantly a threat, from history to the present and future, what are their traits, and how are they portrayed in song?

Sing out, act on CLIMATE CHANGE

CONDEMN RACISM, EMBRACE EQUALITY

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DRINK OF THE WEEK
Screwdriver

SNACK OF THE WEEK
Dorset Knobs

New Albums …

Featured

Dec 3, 2024

Juanita Stein: The Weightless Hour

Dec 3, 2024

New album: This fourth solo album the the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of Australian indie band Howling Bells deals with heavy subjects with a light touch, a sparseness of style, and emotional potency

Dec 3, 2024

Papa M: Ballads of Harry Houdini

Dec 3, 2024

New album: The alt-rock LA-based musician from Louisville, Kentucky, aka David Pajo, returns with six long-ish numbers, not necessarily themed around the famous escape artist, but packed with ear-catching, meaty, thrumming, sometimes looped, and always dynamic guitar work and rhythmic experimentation

Dec 3, 2024

Nov 27, 2024

Kendrick Lamar: GNX

Nov 27, 2024

New album: Braggadocio, flamboyant personas and diss rap is nothing new in hip hop, but the genre’s current chief innovator and Pulitzer Prize winner presents an artfully inventive form filled with eye-poppingly agile, madcap, mischievous wordsmithery, in this surprise new release filled with playful stylistic switches and some surprise targets

Nov 27, 2024

American Railroad by Silkroad Ensemble, Rhiannon Giddens.jpeg

Nov 27, 2024

Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens: American Railroad

Nov 27, 2024

New album: The latest in the Nashville singer’s projects with an international collective of musicians interprets traditional creates new folk songs, themed the tough history of the US rail frontier that was mostly built by Irish, African American, Chinese and Japanese immigrants

Nov 27, 2024

Nov 25, 2024

Poppy Ajudha: Poppy

Nov 25, 2024

New album: The south London singer-songwriter’s sophomore LP takes different direction to her 2022’s more social and political issue-based debut The Power In Us, with a more mainstream route of stylish, smart, soaring pop, soul and R&B centred on fraught, divided, candid emotions

Nov 25, 2024

Jack Cheshire: Interloper

Nov 25, 2024

New album: Following 2020’s acclaimed Fractal Future Plays, the British experimental musician returns with his sixth LP, an excellent exploration across pastoral psychedelia, lysergic polyrhythms and beautiful field recordings on tricky themes of belonging in age of post-Brexit and gentrification

Nov 25, 2024

Nov 23, 2024

Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More

Nov 23, 2024

New album: After various singles over the years, the former Pixies member, and Breeders musician finally releases her first full solo album, a truly fabulous execution of superb songwriting, sharp, heartbreak lyrics, diverse musical styles and instruments across indie, rock and pop, all performed with beautiful tenderness, grit and gusto

Nov 23, 2024

Michael Kiwanuka: Small Changes

Nov 23, 2024

New album: A fourth album by the Mercury prize-winner, another gorgeously crafted and performed set of songs drawing on 70s soul and slowly simmering psychedelic rock, and the third produced by Danger Mouse and Inflo

Nov 23, 2024

Nov 22, 2024

Father John Misty: Mahashmashana

Nov 22, 2024

New album: The king of killer opening lines Josh Tillman returns with another majestic, beautifully melodic, grandiose, playfully clever, darkly humorous and philosophical set of eight epic songs fuelled by a sense of mortality and enduring irony

Nov 22, 2024

Nov 19, 2024

Fazerdaze: Soft Power

Nov 19, 2024

New album: This sophomore album by New Zealand singer-songwriter Amelia Rahayu Murray is dreamy, soft-sheen, shoegazey “bedroom stadium” electro-pop and indie on themes of womanhood, devotion and compassion

Nov 19, 2024

She Drew The Gun: Howl

Nov 19, 2024

New album: Powerful, passionate highly accomplished fourth indie-rock album by singer/songwriter Louisa Roach and band from Wirral in Merseyside, one broadening her musical scope and perspective, not just socio-political and soul-searching personal, but also spanning eons, fuelled by some personal heartbreak

Nov 19, 2024

Ventre unique by Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp.jpeg

Nov 18, 2024

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp: Ventre Unique

Nov 18, 2024

New album: Wonderfully energetic, rhythmic stylish, inventive and witty sixth album by the 12-piece experimental Geneva collective who sing politically in French and English, their music decorated with oodles of of clever brass, violins, double-bass, marimbas, percussion and more

Nov 18, 2024

Nov 18, 2024

Sofie Royer: Young-Girl Forever

Nov 18, 2024

New album: The California-born, Vienna-based Iranian-Austrian multidisciplinary artist’s newest LP is a very catchy mix of eclectic, political and mainstream, electro-pop, disco and new wave, centred on the contradictions of being a female artist today with all of its freedoms and capitalist trappings

Nov 18, 2024

Nov 17, 2024

Du Blonde: Sniff More Gritty

Nov 17, 2024

New album: With a startling new look, the multi-talented British singer-songwriter and video artist Beth Jeans Houghton returns with her powerfully anthemic glam rock, grunge pop and fuzz guitar indie in this follow-up to 2021’s Homecoming

Nov 17, 2024

new songs …

Featured

Dec 2, 2024

Song of the Day: Cloth - Polaroid

Dec 2, 2024

Song of the Day: After last year’s beautifully crafted and spun Secret Measure album, the Glasgow twins Rachael and Paul Swinton return with a thrumming, evocative, vivid new indie-pop number around the theme of memory capture, out on Mogwai’s label Rock Action Records

Dec 2, 2024

Bonnie Prince Billy - The Purple Bird.jpeg

Dec 1, 2024

Song of the Day: Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Our Home (featuring Tim O'Brien)

Dec 1, 2024

Song of the Day: Homely, toe-tapping, but as ever, wittily droll, Kentucky singer-songwriter Will Oldham returns with a very Nashville-style folk-country number with fiddle and Grammy-winning mandolinist Tim O’Brien, heralding a new album, The Purple Bird on 31 January via Domino Records

Dec 1, 2024

Nov 30, 2024

Song of the Day: The Priscillas - Plastic

Nov 30, 2024

Song of the Day: Panache-filled, punchy panic by the glamorous London power-punk quartet in this new single about how one of the planet’s biggest polluting problems goes down to cellular level, with menacing guitars and bass lines, driving drums, and sharp, dynamic vocal harmonies

Nov 30, 2024

Nov 29, 2024

Song of the Day: KuleeAngee - Animated Love

Nov 29, 2024

Song of the Day: A fabulous toe-tapping, funk-disco, acid-house-influenced, talky-vocal indie-electronica groove debut by the Scottish duo of Duncan Grant and Keshav Kanabar, out on the Manchester indie label, Lab Records

Nov 29, 2024

Nov 28, 2024

Song of the Day: The Ocelots - The Good of a Bad Year

Nov 28, 2024

Song of the Day: This beautiful, gently paced, piano-based single, about highlighting overlooked moments of joy, heralds the forthcoming new album Everything, When Said Slowly, by the Leipzig-based Irish twin brothers Ashley and Brandon Watson from Wexford

Nov 28, 2024

Nov 27, 2024

Song of the Day: Les Amazones d’Afrique - Wa Jo (featuring Jemiriye and Mamani Keïta)

Nov 27, 2024

Song of the Day: A fabulous, feisty, Afro-electro dance track by the female collective, calling for women of all sizes to unite on the dancefloor ‘without fear or worry’ and featuring newest member Nigerian singer Jemiriye on lead vocals alongside founding member Mamani Keïta

Nov 27, 2024

Nov 26, 2024

Song of the Day: Sophie Jamieson - How Do You Want To Be Loved?

Nov 26, 2024

Song of the Day: A gorgeous, gut-wrenching, intimate folk and electronica single by the London-based singer-songwriter about trying to find forgiveness when faced with pain, from the upcoming album, I Still Want To Share, out on 17 January 2025 on Bella Union

Nov 26, 2024

Sasami - Blood on the Silver Screen.jpeg

Nov 25, 2024

Song of the Day: SASAMI - Just Be Friends

Nov 25, 2024

Song of the Day: Superbly soaring, stirring, classy melodic rock-pop by the Los Angeles singer-songwriter and classically trained French horn player Sasami Ashworth, with a new single about that sense of dizzying longing in that in-between state of an ambiguous relationship, and heralding her next album, Blood On The Silver Screen

Nov 25, 2024

Nov 24, 2024

Song of the Day: Kelora - Something Else

Nov 24, 2024

Song of the Day: Mesmeric, shimmering, haunting psychedelic dream pop and cyber folk by the Glasgow-formed, London-based duo of Kitty Hall and Benedict Salter, heralding their new album, Sleepers, out on 10 February via True Panther Records

Nov 24, 2024

Nov 23, 2024

Song of the Day: Marie Davidson - Sexy Clown

Nov 23, 2024

Song of the Day: The Canadian DJ-producer, electronic musician and vocalist returns with a sassy, talky, catchy, witty electro-pop dance number heralding her new album, City of Clowns, made in collaboration with Soulwax and Pierre Guerineau out 28 February 2025, via Soulwax’s own DEEWEE label

Nov 23, 2024

Nov 22, 2024

Song of the Day: Franz Ferdinand - Night or Day

Nov 22, 2024

Song of the Day: Glasgow’s favourite art-pop-rockers, fronted by the articulate Alex Kapranos, return with another catchy, jaunty new love song heralding their forthcoming album, The Human Fear, out 10 January 2025 on Domino Records

Nov 22, 2024

Nov 21, 2024

Song of the Day: Sunny War - Walking Contradiction

Nov 21, 2024

Song of the Day: With sharp, socio-political lyrics on modern paradoxes, absurdities and inequalities, this beguiling duet with the legendary singer from anarcho-punk band Crass, heralds a new album by the Nashville born, LA-based folk-punk artist Sydney Lyndella Ward, Armageddon In A Summer Dress

Nov 21, 2024

Word of the week

Featured

Nov 27, 2024

Word of the week: broticolous

Nov 27, 2024

Word of the week: Mice, rats, spiders, foxes to raccoons, this obscure adjective, connected to the French noun broticole, this relates to any animal and insect species with a tendency to live around and alongside humans and their dwellings perhaps as scavengers, but also showing adaptability

Nov 27, 2024

Nov 15, 2024

Word of the week: circumbendibus

Nov 15, 2024

Word of the week: Not a snaking elongated piece of public transport but still a very evocative 17th-century word for a circuitous, long-winded route or way of doing something or telling a story …

Nov 15, 2024

Deoch an Dorus pub in Partick, Glasgow.jpeg

Oct 16, 2024

Word of the week: doch-an-dorris

Oct 16, 2024

Word of the week: From the17th-century Scottish Gaelic phrase, deoch an doruis (and also with the form deochandorus), this literally means “door-drink” – a toast made with, or to honour, someone about to depart

Oct 16, 2024

Oct 4, 2024

Word of the week: eel-skins / excruciators

Oct 4, 2024

Word of the week: Aside from the literal outer layer of the ray-finned slippery fish, this evocative, slightly suggestive 19th-century slang means very tight trousers, while this week’s bonus word, excruciators, points to the experience of wearing very tight shoes

Oct 4, 2024

Sep 19, 2024

Word of the week: flittermouse

Sep 19, 2024

Word of the week: With other variants such as flickermouse and flinder-mouse, this rather charming Tudor-period English noun is a rather evocative and onomatopoeically descriptive one for that quietly sonic-guided night creature – the bat

Sep 19, 2024