The city is responsible for 80% of the world’s natural history TV shows.
All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by Martyn Jones.
The company says the expanded site could support about 3,200 full-time jobs across the UK.
ALDOUS HARDING
Train On The Island (4AD)
Eternal respect to someone who once called an album Warm Chris, but Aldous Harding’s fifth long-player is a frustratingly mixed bag and no mistake. The gnomic lyrics and vocal shapeshifting are unalterable, and are underpinned this time with crisply minimal swatches of piano, guitar and other quietnesses.
This works very well on opening track I Ate The Most, where oblique childhood snapshots are dropped unsettlingly over chill Fender Rhodes and other skitters, or the title track, which locks onto a soft piano motif, has little guitar scratches for texture, and stop-starts nicely. There’s also a plum duet right in the middle called Venus In The Zinnia – featuring Huw Evans aka H. Hawkline – and a whole lot of lilting loveliness.
But these highs are diluted by the album’s second half – short stories that don’t seem to go anywhere, tasteful beds that need messing up. Still: all hail artists that can toss out greatness and clangers with equal ease.
words WILL STEEN
The naturalist’s seven-decade career was marked with a special concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE
Remember The Humans (City Slang)
Back before Facebook and Twitter, before the techbros took over, before social media toxified culture and politics, there was Friends Reunited. Its title echoing that of 2002 breakthrough You Forgot It In People, Remember The Humans sees these particular friends reunited with each other for the first time in nine years (and with producer David Newfeld for the first time since 2005) and is in many ways a hopeful, joyous protest album that insists – in the face of the relentless algorithmic and AI onslaught – on the fundamental truth that interpersonal connections matter.
Broken Social Scene were always fragmented in name only – an exemplary collaboration between Canadian indie-rock luminaries in which individual identities were preserved rather than subsumed – and nothing’s changed. Lead single and first track Not Around Anymore typically has a lot going on – a loping groove, horns, guitar patterns – while newest gang member Hannah Georgas contributes vocals to the excellent Only The Good I Keep and Lisa Lobsinger delivers a bona fide 80s-flavoured pop banger in Relief.
BSS albums invariably pale in comparison to their live performances, and this one does sag somewhat in the middle, but they save the best for last: the bold vintage-Arcade-Fire-do-Springsteen of Paying For Your Love and the widescreen sweep of the Feist-fronted What Happens Now.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
Former Strictly host Daly and Radio 2 presenter Kay jointly announced they are “to separate amicably”.
From hanging out with primates to early climate warnings, here’s a selection of his trailblazing programmes.
The title of Voka Gentle’s latest album Domestic Bliss might imply contentment in confinement, but the London trio – twins Imogen and Ellie Mason, plus Imogen’s husband William J. Stokes – make it their mission to burst out of any container you care to put them in. The sisters face each other across a mound of electronic gadgetry Holy Fuck style, in cahoots with inventive guest drummer Ollie Middleton, while Stokes contributes guitar and vocals.
Freewheeling technicolour pop is the result – all buzzing synths, gang chants and surprise left turns. The harder-edged Creon I takes the punchy distorted stomp of Battles’ Atlas and runs off in a different direction. And thanks to an uncooperative guitar, TV Bra – a robo-pop shopping-channel ad for wearable tech – is a late setlist substitute adding gloss to an already strong team performance.
That support slots like this can be beneficial in helping to raise profile is borne out by GANS, whose dates with fellow Black Country outfit Big Special – in addition to a debut LP, Good For The Soul, released on Pete Doherty’s label Strap Originals – have evidently given them a platform for a headline tour of their own. Formerly a duo, drummer Euan Woodman and Tom Rhodes have now been joined by a third permanent member, Tommy Lawther, on saxophone and flute. “Mr Miles Davis!” exclaims Rhodes, announcing another sax solo.
First, the positives. GANS throw everything into their performance, to a largely rabid response; Woodman expertly whips up a moshpit occupied by energetic youngsters, while us older onlookers edge to the back and sides. They don’t take themselves too seriously, and react with cheery equanimity to botched beginnings. (Woodman audibly chastises himself for starting a new song at the wrong tempo; Rhodes aborts another with the declaration “That was live music!”) And a flautist prompting an excitable entanglement of flailing limbs is undeniably entertaining.
Otherwise, though, GANS come off as boringly generic. Their look – 80s tache, Aussie rules mullet, sportswear (swiftly shed) – is a familiar one to say the least, and it feels like they’ve given more thought to merch design than music. Their one-dimensional lad-punk songs do precious little to distinguish themselves from the sort of thing that Soft Play were doing over a decade ago, as Slaves, and their lyrics supposedly reflect grim societal realities but remain mired in tired cliches (closer The King’s Head in particular).
If there’s a glimmer of hope for the future (which includes a forthcoming second album), it’s late-set highlight Oh George, which draws on techno thump as well as punk attitude. Too little, too late to prompt a more generous re-evaluation, though – likewise the sight of students liberating gig posters from their frames as souvenirs on the way out.
GANS / Voka Gentle, Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Wed 6 May
words and photos BEN WOOLHEAD
The Irish language rappers were leading the way midweek over Melanie C and Michael Jackson.
In the now-deleted X post, Hamill – who has also voiced the Joker character in various DC Comics projects – wrote that Trump “should live long enough to witness his inevitable devastating loss in the midterms, be held accountable for his unprecedented corruption, impeached, convicted & humiliated for his countless crimes. Long enough to realize he’ll be disgraced in the history books, forevermore.”