Wolfgang Tillmans recalls tearing an A0 poster advertising Pet Shop Boys' album Introspective off a building site, admiring its coolness and abstract design, which resonated with the era's aesthetic.
Now, more than 50 years into their career, British pub-pop legends Squeeze have rested their pints long enough to revisit Trixies (BMG), a rock opera founding members Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook wrote as teenagers before they had a record deal. In 1974. The ambition! The naivete!
The first single from the forthcoming CoSemo album is the soulful, instant classic, house track 'You Know Where To Go'. Produced by Finnian Casey it features vocals from Nick DeCoSemo and Kristina Train. Aside from Kristina's sublime singing 'You Know Where To Go' is given another, authentic analog dimension via additional Rhodes Piano and classic synth parts - provided by English Mercury Music Prize-nominee and Indie Rock legend Ed Harcourt.
Things begin promisingly enough with the darkly powerful Going Up and All That Jazz from 1980's Crocodiles, the first of the terrific four-album run which blended psychedelia, post-punk and classic songwriting to turn the Liverpudlians into one of most hallowed bands of the decade.
It's impossible to quantify the emotional landscape of a song-there's no judgment more subjective-but to my ear, "Ceremony" captures the drama of an unforgettable moment that feels like it's going to change your life forever, one where everything that's been is about to meet the future, and you can feel the unnamable tension of possibility swelling until it's about to burst.
Victoria is by the stage, she goes onto the stage, and of course at that point Brooklyn is suddenly, literally, devastated because he thought he was going to do his first dance with his wife. Then Nicola leaves the room crying her eyes out. Brooklyn is stuck there on stage. And then they do this dance and Marc Anthony's going, 'Put your hands on your mother's hips'. It was a Latin thing. The whole situation was very awkward for everyone in the room.
Originally made up of Gary Barlow, Robbie Williams, Mark Owen, Jason Orange and Howard Donald, Take That debuted in the nineties and stormed the charts with songs like "Pray," "Relight My Fire," and "Babe." After Williams left in 1995 the others disbanded in 1996 before reforming without Williams in 2005. The "Rock DJ" singer then rejoined the band in 2010 before Williams and Orange left and the other three continued as a trio.
London band Sorry dropped two new songs today, "Billy Elliot" and "Alone In Cologne." The former premiered on BBC 6Music this morning, and the latter was released shortly after. Listen to both, out now on Domino, below.
The best song to play at a party It depends what stage of the party you are at. Early doors it would probably be I Heard It Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye. As the night wears on, I'd work through Prince, the Stones and Bowie, and when it really kicks off, Phat Planet by Leftfield, Born Slippy .NUXX by Underworld, and Ascension [Nic Fanciulli remix] by Gorillaz featuring Vince Staples, which is an absolute banger.
It is billed as Danny L Harle's debut album, which it definitely isn't his actual debut album, Harlecore, came out in 2021, although in at least one sense, Cerulean is markedly different from its predecessor. It's the weighty guestlist, featuring Clairo, Caroline Polachek, PinkPantheress, MNEK and more, a reflection of Harle's ascension into the major leagues of pop production: he's worked with Polachek before, as well as Florence + the Machine and Dua Lipa (who also features on Cerulean), among others.
The arrival of Robbie Williams's 13th album has been a complicated business. It was announced in May 2025 and was supposed to come out in October, when its title would have chimed with the 90s nostalgia sparked by the Oasis reunion. Williams spent the summer engaging in promotion, unveiling fake Britpop-themed blue plaques around London and staging a press conference at the Groucho Club.
Dry Cleaning singer Florence Shaw likes to keep some distance between her vocals and the rest of the band. Shaw's curious confidences, spoken-word confessions, and bemused monologues appear to have only a passing relationship to the propulsive rhythms and brittle riffs that frame them. That dissonance can be striking at first, but it grows restrictive-stark contrast can only take you so far.
Shortly after Kiss All the Time was first announced, fans noticed that the album cover resembles a digital camera screen and buttons. "Aperture" (which dropped on Jan. 22) sticks to that thematic imagery, its title coming from the photography term for the size of a lens opening through which light can enter. As Styles sings in the pre-chorus, "Aperture lets the light in," seemingly embracing an optimistic outlook, or letting in the (figurative) light.
Labi Siffre, the 80-year-old British folk musician, is back after spending decades out of the spotlight. He just announced his first new album in 28 years; the appropriately titled Unfinished Business is out later this year on Demon Music Group. He's also shared the new song " Far Away," a piano ballad that leans into Siffre's soul influences, with a music video. Check it out below.
After seven solo albums, Tempest had begun thinking about working with others, and so the night before the recording session, he and Chatten repaired to Albarn's studio and wrote their verses together, responding to each other. It seemed to work really well, he says: A true collaboration. Nevertheless, he concedes, the actual recording of Flags proved to be quite the baptism of fire.
You could say that the songs on Scritti Politti's Cupid & Psyche '85 are informed by Robert Rauschenberg. You could say they interrogate the very creative act that yielded them. You could say that they rebel against the notion of private language in abstract art, taking the position that meaning can only be constructed in terms that have been agreed upon implicitly or explicitly by artist and audience alike.
"It always happens at some point," Rob Pursey says in reference to "twee," a descriptor that has dogged he and partner Amelia Fletcher's bands for 40 years. It was a word often used as derogatory by music journalists, but like a lot of genres - shoegaze, trip-hop - it's become accepted and embraced by many who have listened to their band Heavenly in the nearly two decades between breaking up and reforming in 2023.
Indie-pop quintet Heavenly will pair their already-announced 2026 tour with a new album, their first since 1996's Operation Heavenly. The band-original members Amelia Fletcher, Cathy Rogers, Peter Momtchiloff, and Rob Pursey, plus new drummer Ian Button- recorded Highway to Heavenly with producer Toby Burroughs. It will be released on February 27 via Fletcher and Pursey's label, Skep Wax.
There isn't one songwriter, and so the flavour of the band is always going to change, says Dave Vanian, reflecting on 50 years of the group of which he has been the sole constant member, the Damned. Captain Sensible is a great fan of syrupy pop music and prog and glam rock. So his writing is very poppy, melodic and quite wonderful.
