Reviews by richardwiggins

I had The Zutons on regular rotation when I was 13 but have had a 20 year gap in my listening. My wife walked in whilst I was listening and started doing a sort of barn dance. I don’t know if that says anything. The part that stands out most positively oddly is what my dad accurately described as the “grade 3 saxophone” which is fantastic in its own way.

I can hear why a time came when I stopped playing this record. While there are some more memorable songs in the second half, there is not much to it and it's quite ploddy. The compositions are “nice” but bar from the rare hectic moment (“pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure”) there is not much to get your pulse racing. The Beatles are overly credited with influencing every band under the sun, but I think it's fair to say in this instance that one's time would probably be better spent listening to them.

When it's got a good hook, I enjoy musical theatre and the more theatrical end of pop music. Even though the words “rock opera” don’t get me particularly excited I found the title track of Bat Out Of Hell to be pretty awesome - it's got a hell of a driving melody and plenty of character. Unfortunately it is in no way representative of the vast majority of the album which is home to too many overwrought takes on overlong Elton John-style ballads which are sadly not my thing. Occasionally they’ll bloom into something else, but not often enough for me.

I like how blunt, hard and excitable the bass playing is on this record. Deep Purple is at its best when everything is very bold, forceful and insistent. Oddly it's the mega single Smoke on the Water which is my least favourite song, the only one I disliked. I think it lacks their energetic USP. I also take issue with the lyrics of the final track where blind people are essentially likened to mystical creatures. All in all though a bit of good fun.

In the least pejorative way possible, What’s the Story (Morning Glory?) sounds like it’s been fine-tuned for karaoke. It’s catchy, cathartic, and a little cheesy. I can only imagine how deafening the crowds must have been at the reunion gigs.

Oasis’ 2025 tour setlist featured 6 songs from their debut; 8 from Morning Glory; 2 from Be Here Now; 1 from Heathen Chemistry; and more surprisingly while three of their latter-day LPs were in no way represented, 5 songs from their b-sides album The Masterplan. It suggests then that for fans of Oasis, Morning Glory represents the zenith, so good that the b-sides are getting their time in the sun thirty years later.

Received wisdom while I was growing up was that Definitely Maybe was Oasis’ best album by quite some margin. Certainly that’s what the Gallagher brothers repeated post-break up. While it might be the “cooler” choice I agree with fans that the follow up is the superior record. Not only is it tighter, with a greater number of iconic songs, it feels like the culmination of the whole Brit-pop project.

The production is very sophisticated throughout; modern beats which other rappers of the early 90s would have killed for. I appreciate the social conscience of the lyrical content when it moves beyond braggadociousness. The overall effect is surprisingly friendly given the “gangster” label. Gangster rap has a sensitive side.

If I was to critique this I’d say the rapping itself is decent, but not mind blowing, and the project is overlong with several of the songs covering similar ground. I was happy to see the inclusion of his heavy metal side project though - impressive range.

The Cure maintain a gothic, foreboding vibe for the full length of the album. There isn’t even a shard of light. It is an affecting, daunting listen which feels like the natural end point of a form of exploration the band started with the equally patient Seventeen Seconds. Pornography ups the levels of atmosphere though with a greater commitment to keeping the sound pent up, never letting any air in. Its consistency is in complete opposition to the debut and the poppier more single friendly eras to come. It is potentially The Cure at their most aesthetically distinctive.

Weather Report cannot contain themselves showing off a range of approaches across this record, the unifying thread being an eccentric and overbold approach to Jazz with “out there” synths, theme tune bass lines and some of the best drumming I’ve ever heard.

A nauseating, torturous listen for me, the best bits being the brief pauses between songs, or at least the moments before John Lee’s warbling voice meets the never ending, looping chord progressions. It perfectly encapsulates all my least favourite things about blues music. They sound like the unpaid band at the school fete.

The abrasive patchwork of distorted guitar loops, compressed drums and tortured, highly processed beats is unique and at times even ingenious. The most progressive and exciting instrumentals sit at the beginning of the album, but at no point does it sound disinteresting.

The lyrics however range from being at best obscure enough to happily ignore, and at worst elaborately unpleasant, fake deep and emotionally stifling. Also, Trent Reznor has a distracting obsession with animals.

I was surprised by the degree to which this album charmed me, it made for a very perky, smooth Saturday morning listen. The first two thirds have more interesting songwriting, after which it does spin its wheels a bit, but from end to end it’s perfectly pleasant. It manages to have bundles of energy without ever becoming more than pleasingly low key.

I was especially surprised by the Talking Heads cover, clearly it’s not my favourite version of Heaven, but I was impressed at Red’s ability to transform this song album unrecognisably, and it still worked well.

A smooth half hour of deeply impassioned R&B with a pitch perfect flow. I was particularly taken by the emotionally charged ballad Lost One and pop rap infused The Other Side. It has a lot to say about sexual politics and gave me an empathetic insight into Jazmine Sullivan’s experience, which is very different from my own.

The aptly named Birth of the Cool gives us some of the earliest Miles Davis recordings from 1949 and 1950, a decade before his most celebrated Kind of Blue and two decades before his revolutionary Bitches Brew. While it is true that this compilation does not stir in me the kinds of emotions that those two aforementioned records do, the fact that 75 years later it stirs anything at all is astonishing.

When the average person thinks of "jazz" they probably most readily think of the exact sound captured on Birth of Cool. When I hear jazz played live in Blues Bars in London it is this sound which they are trying to recapture, and surely no one does it better than Miles Davis.

No doubt Led Zeppelin are legends, and IV stands as the pinnacle of their achievements. Its my dislike of hard rock which stops me fully connecting with them but what makes IV interesting for me is the English Folk and psychedelic elements which layer their sound in a satisfying way.

For an album that’s this listenable and acceptable in a public setting there is a surprising amount of rough and tumble. It gets intense and screamy with heightened occasionally violent lyrics without ever tipping into anything even vaguely anti-social. The focus on delivering a big melody with every song means that there are hooks that give the listener a route through the noise, but the abrasiveness then enhances everything around it, upping the excitement. An all time classic.

I am thrilled with the atmosphere, the tense build up and dramatic transitions on this album. When the songwriting is at its height (School, Dreamer, Crime of the Century) it all comes together in a compelling package. There’s something stopping me from absolutely loving it, perhaps that I’m a bit cooler on some of the songs than others, but I can’t deny that it’s had much more of an effect on me than a typical listen. Very cool.

An enjoyable mix of sounds from the entire punk spectrum from pop to hardcore, I like that it goes hard in parts and is more melodic and playful in others. I enjoy the strained vocals and how fuzzy everything sounds, it hits a nice balance that feels a bit more robust than the average Tony Hawks Underground band. The songwriting feels more distinct in the first half, though it might just be that I was exhausted by the pummeling drums and jittering guitars by the end.

If you ignore the couple of ballads and the harebrained John Lennon cover, you’re left with an hour of very peppy, convincing pop music from a band who are perfectly in sync, led by Khaled, the ultimate hype man. It's a fresh fusion of sounds and they do well to keep the energy up over its 78 minutes. The length is an issue though with Khaled covering the same ground more than once across the tracklist - surely an hour would have been sufficient!

Bad Company are a skilled band who clearly know how to perform but I find listening to their compositions like wading through sludge. It's dreadfully boring and takes a long time. I was never going to be won over by a series of slowly unfurling blues tinged hard rock songs, so they never stood a chance really but I’ve heard others do it better.

It takes a little too long to get going, but once it does, Orbital 2 is great. I quickly admired their confidence in how long they spent with each idea, slowly tweaking, introducing new elements and building until they grew into monstrous forces of propulsion, endlessly moving forward. You feel like you’re in safe hands, being delivered one driving beat after another. It does the opposite of a typical pop record in that it ends on its very best material, but because of this, and the album’s evolution, they more than earn the 65 minute running time.

I’ll admit that after recently listening to “Heroes” and Station to Station I was worried that while I really enjoyed Bowie’s discography outside of the his most famous works, they didn’t inspire in me the same level of intense enjoyment as Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust. It turns out I didn’t need to worry, as Low might be his best album.

Low is a completely different kettle of fish. Bowie takes us on an incredible journey with no weak spots. It’s astonishingly free and melodic, only snapping into a more organised shape when you reach the big single Sound and Vision. It stretches itself into something even looser, smoother and abstract on the back end, which is where some of the biggest and most satisfying surprises are. Closing track Subterraneans completely reshapes my image of Bowie and what his music is capable of.

A masterpiece.