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Biting The Hand: ABC’s Beauty Stab 40 Years On
ABC's follow up to the incredibly successful Lexicon Of Love, was seen as costly misstep by most at the time, but why then, asks Matthew Lindsay, does it feel more resonant than ever? "If you’re out...
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The Fall’s Perverted By Language Revisited 40 Years On
On its 40th anniversary, Eden Tizard explores The Fall’s Perverted By Language, an album where Mark E. Smith turns his focus to the suburbs and its inhabitants. A key record in The Fall saga,...
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Down To You: Joni Mitchell’s Court And Spark At 50
Joni Mitchell's sixth album was a change of gear, coming deep from within the ME decade, its romantic entanglements dissolving to reveal a deeper search within but far from being solipsistic...
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Lightning Ahead: Underworld’s Dubnobass- withmyheadman At 30
Modern life is fast-paced, endlessly fluctuating and subject to chance; how in that case, asks Darran Anderson, did Underworld become such persuasive laureates of the modern “Modernity is the...
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Dead Dogs & Beauty: cLOUDDEAD’s Ten At 20
Twenty years ago – the smart money was on Kanye West, Madvillain and cLOUDDEAD when it came to groundbreaking hip hop, says Lior Phillips, so what happened to the Ohioan three-piece? “Like in a dream,...
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An Explosion Of Feelings: Soft Cell’s This Last Night In Sodom
Matthew Lindsay celebrates the 1984 farewell album that was derided as an act of drug-addled, synth pop self-sabotage but was in actuality a rich and challenging masterpiece "I was losing it. I'd lost...
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Long Game: Ghostface Killah’s The Pretty Toney Album 20 Years On
Often overlooked today, Ghostface's fourth solo LP marked the moment where the iconoclastic rapper became the first among Wu equals, Angus Batey argues Imagine if, on that day in late 1993 when you'd...
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Unnatural Blues: How Moby’s Play Predicted The Collapse Of The Music Industry
25 years after it was first released we should now regard Moby's Play as the first album of the 21st Century, says Ed Gillet. This article was first published on 13 May 2019 In the two decades since...
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Fit At 20: The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come For Free Revisited
As Mike Skinner’s bestselling hip hop concept album celebrates its twentieth birthday, Fergal Kinney looks at how the Birmingham rapper plotted a commercial crossover moment that changed British music...
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The Devil in the Flesh: David Sylvian’s ‘Red Guitar’ at 40
Travis Elborough recalls how the Japan frontman's startling debut solo single ‘Red Guitar’ stood out among the rest of 1980s pop, and how his teenage love of David Sylvian introduced him to worlds...
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The Sound of the City: Pet Shop Boys’ West End Girls 40 Years on
Russian history, hip hop, the underbelly of Soho, TS Eliot and James Cagney collided on the dance floor of the Paradise Garage, says Matthew Lindsay, to create one of 1984's perfect singles “Under the...
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The Hideous Ecstasy Of Fear: Diamond Dogs At 50
Even half a century later, the decadent dystopia of Diamond Dogs is never over, says Matthew Lindsay explains. This feature was originally published in December 2014 The 1970s. England, like everywhere...
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Gonna Make You The Biggest Star This World Has Ever Seen: Hot Chocolate’s...
Hot Chocolate’s debut album presents a dark and edgy vision at odds with the band’s later reputation as MOR balladeers and purveyors of feelgood funk-lite, writes Ben Graham When, in 1975, Harold...
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You Don’t Love Me (No No No) & Dawn Penn’s Three Decade Journey To The Top
It's now 30 years since 'You Don't Love Me' became the sound of the summer of '94; the same amount of time it took to become a hit single in the first place, writes Wrong Tom In a West London pub,...
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Creation Myth: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ From Her To Eternity At 40
It’s four decades since Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released their debut album From Her To Eternity, a record that found Cave attempting a new musical and lyrical language that could free him from his...
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Technology Works: Mark Fell On The Anniversary Of The Battle Of Orgreave
The Rotherham-based musician and artist looks back 40 years and considers the noise of industry, the noise of industrial action, the noise of excessive police violence and electronic music as...
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Winning It All: Prince’s Purple Rain Revisited
Ned Raggett remembers the audacity – the white heat – of a first encounter with the OST in 1984. This feature was first published on 25 June 2014 Saying something new about albums that have been loved...
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An Altamont for Rock Music’s Imperial Period: June 1, 1974 Half A Century On
The diaristic title of the Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Brian Eno and Nico's live record demands it be put into some kind of historical context. Michael Bellis looks at a highly unusual album released in a...
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I Live Sweat But I Dream Light Years: Minutemen’s Double Nickels On The Dime...
Stewart Smith celebrates working-class creativity, James Joyce, free jazz, hardcore punk, anti-imperialism, and all of the other ingredients that went into Minutemen's double classic A glorious...
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How To Sell A Contradiction: Sade’s Diamond Life & Sophisti-Pop 40 Years On
Unlike 80s pop’s synthetic bombast, says Toby Manning, some of the era’s best music was defined by a sophisticated smoothness whose ambivalence captured the period’s contradictions Few albums purr...
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