98 posts
Reissues
After the fanfare of the reissue of two CD and four vinyl Kate Bush Remastered boxsets last November, as well as separate remastered versions of every album, Kate Bush now…
Reissue review: New Order – Movement (Definitive Edition)
It’s oddly moving to see a slick, ‘definitive’ version of an album that was so raw, so ragged and unready. When Movement was released in November 1981 it was greeted…
Review: Massive Attack – Mezzanine
There was a period just before the turn of the millennium when every soirée you attended appeared to be soundtracked by Mezzanine. To be described as dinner-party music is customarily…
Review: Kate Bush – Remastered On Vinyl And CD
A series of new remasters charts the incredible back catalogue of one of pop’s most beloved auteurs, Kate Bush. At a music-awards show a few years ago, a lubricated John…
Review: The Police: Every Move You Make: The Studio Recordings
Only an accident of birth made The Police a New Wave band. Sting was a sharp, slick songwriter; Andy Summers had hung with Hendrix and strummed with Soft Machine and…
Review: Bronski Beat – The Age Of Consent
This expanded version of Bronski Beat’s Jimmy Somerville-showcasing hit 1984 album reveals a vital and politicised, yet upfliting, synth-pop triumph “My purpose was truth,” said Jimmy Somerville recently, looking back…
Review: Cocteau Twins – Treasure Hiding: The Fontana Years
In 4AD’s halcyon years as the keepers of indie-pop’s most ethereal flames, no artists were more closely associated with the label’s ethos than the Cocteau Twins. Indeed, some of their…
Review: This Mortal Coil – It’ll End In Tears/Filigree & Shadow/Blood
Ivo Watts-Russell is one of the great under-celebrated pathfinders for UK 80s indie music. His 4AD label incubated a sharp, profound, melancholic musical aesthetic whose influence has reverberated ever since.…
Review: Yazoo – Four Pieces/Three Pieces
A new boxset – on either four vinyl discs or three CDs – remasters Yazoo’s two classic studio albums and adds BBC radio sessions and remixes Yazoo’s genesis was rooted…
Review: Pet Shop Boys – Behaviour / Very / Bilingual: Further Listening
These three reissues – plus extras – covering the Pet Shop Boys’ 1990s output prove that we should take their post-imperial phase seriously… In the pre-fame days, when he was…