Excitement, Trepidation And Art
Eighteen-year-old Bo sent me a selection of exam paintings. I think you will agree she has a successful future ahead if she decides to pursue art as a career. 6-year-old Elias is a very outdoor adventurous boy but enjoyed an afternoon in my studio trying out new painting techniques to produce this exciting landscape.
Albums: Mastodon Marrow Deep
Mastodon has always had a knack for turning pain into something thunderous, but Marrow Deep feels different. This is an album born from grief, upheaval and profound change, yet rather than collapsing under that weight, the Atlanta metal giants use it as fuel
Albums: Alex Warren WILDCHILD
There is something about Alex Warren’s music that feels deeply personal while somehow remaining universally relatable. His songs have an unusual ability to sit beside you in the messier corners of life, offering neither easy answers nor polished clichés, but the comforting sense that somebody else understands. On WILDCHILD, that quality develops into something particularly affecting: an endearing, emotionally charged and remarkably honest pop record about surviving the past, finding connection in the present and learning to embrace the life that remains.
10 Ways To Explore The UK's Capital Of Sculpture
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When it comes to sculpture, nowhere in the UK compares to Wakefield. Home to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The Hepworth Wakefield, and a thriving community of contemporary artists and makers, the district has earned its reputation as the UK's Capital of Sculpture. Yet art is only part of the story.
Forty Years On, Mark Thomas Still Hasn't Got A Pension
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As the veteran political comic takes a new show on the road, he talks to Andrew Palmer about tax law, wrongful convictions and a swim in a peer's moat Mark Thomas has been "standing up" for forty years, which is impossible and also true.
EPs: Appleton Side By Side
Appleton Side By Side Tracks: Ready To Begin, Falling Into You, Strange Kinda Paradise, Monster Label: Appleton Recordings Back in 2002, after the dissolution of All Saints, sisters Nicole and Natalie Appleton decided not to take the solo route. Instead, they paired up and released the driven anthem Fantasy.
Albums: Post Malone - August 26
Listening to August 26th, ten years on, feels like discovering an early sketch of a superstar. Before the stadiums, country detours and endless chart-topping collaborations, Po
Albums: Train - Mad Dog in the Fog
There is something reassuringly familiar about Train. More than three decades into their career, they still understand that the best pop-rock songs don’t need to shout to make an impression
Classical Music: Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D minor
Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D minor is a work that dares almost too much. Six movements, the best part of a hundred minutes, and a programme that runs from the awakening of Pan to a final movement of wordless, all-embracing love: it asks a conductor to hold together a vast orchestra, a mezzo-soprano soloist, a boys' choir and a women's chorus without the whole edifice splintering into episodes. I went into this recording expecting admiration. I came out with something closer to reappraisal as Petrenko unlocked Mahler's cosmic Third and the RPO, and Harmonia Mundi's engineers are on inspired form
Classical Music: Janáček The Excursions Of Mr Brouček
It would be easy to file Brouček away as a Janáček footnote, the one even his admirers tend to skip. Rattle and his forces make a compelling case that it shouldn't be. A comic opera, treated with real seriousness, and all the better for it.
Classical Music: Beethoven String Quartets Vol 3
It is, as they say, the gift that keeps on giving. The Doric String Quartet continue their sublime traversal of Beethoven's quartets with a third volume that ranges across the composer's early, middle and late periods – from the youthful high spirits of Op. 18 No. 3 to the visionary strangeness of the final works.
Classical Music: Elena Ruehr: Violin Concerto No. 1
Released by St7dio as a digital single rather than packaged within a fuller album, it stands entirely on its own merits.
From the opening bars, this concerto sings. Ruehr's writing is accessible without ever feeling slight, its lyrical lines unfolding with real confidence in what the violin can do. She understands the instrument intimately, and the orchestral accompaniment is judged with equal skill: nothing overwhelms the soloist, nothing sits idle. The woodwind, in particular, is excellent throughout.
Brighton '84, A Devastating Hour In Room 102
Andrew Palmer finds a play that trades on nostalgia, then quietly detonates it, as two men's secrets collide on the eve of the Brighton bomb. There is a particular kind of dread that arrives dressed as nostalgia.
Northern Ballet's Gentleman Jack
Undoubtedly best know through the television drama series created by Sally Wainwright, Gentleman Jack is the story of a powerful Yorkshire businesswoman from the 1830s. The 19th century was not a time known for its liberal-minded, easy-going attitudes to women in general and certainly not women who preferred other women as their life partners.
Levina on Invincible Summer: finding her way back to connection, joy and herself
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For London-based alt-soul artist Levina, Invincible Summer is more than just a new album. Written over the course of two years, the record charts a deeply personal and musical journey through disconnection, self-discovery and, ultimately, a return to connection.
Lennie Gallant: Songs, Stories and a Little Bit of Laughter
With 16 albums, a Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame induction and a career that has taken him from intimate venues to the International Space Station, Lennie Gallant has certainly accumulated a few stories along the way. The celebrated Canadian singer-songwriter is bringing those stories to the UK, with an appearance at the British Country Music Festival followed by a mini UK tour.
Krankenhaus Festival
Big is definitely not always better. Krankenhaus Festival, curated and organised by the band Sea Power, is small by design; it doesn’t get bigger and, as a result, is perfectly formed. A completely unique festival that does so much right and is a beautiful combination of quirkiness, chaos and community.
Albums: Natalie Imbruglia Algorithm
Having started to tease the release back in April with the impressive shimmer of Upside Down, it was immediately apparent that Natalie has not lost sight of the slight alternative pop leanings that produced her biggest hits to date, but that she is not afraid either of playing the pure pop game. Subsequent singles, Algorithm and Just Drive, both built on this. Natalie Imbruglia has not lost sight of who she is as an artist, it is clear from these singles that she is simply ready to fully embrace the pop label with all her heart.
This Generation's Nirvana? Turnstile Turn Piece Hall Into A Hardcore Haven
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Two reviewers, two takes: we dispatched a pair of writers to cover Turnstile's Piece Hall show from different angles. This is gig correspondent Ian Street's view. Piece Hall really is a quite astonishing backdrop as a live music venue; it must be really unique for the artists, which is perhaps why it’s gone from strength to strength over the last few years.
Leeds Festival Goes Pop
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For anyone who went to the Leeds Festival a few years ago, the line-up of the 2026 Festival would have been seen as incomprehensible; whilst in the past the festival always tendered to favour rock and indie acts, the emphasis was more on dance, rap and pop artists. The festival has become a rite of passage for youngsters who are celebrating their GCSE exam results.
Gripping Postwar Thriller Heads To Yorkshire Venues
Philip Stokes’s acclaimed play, Shellshocked, is heading to Yorkshire next month as part of the Red Ladder Local programme.
Bon Jovi - Hanging On By A Wing And A Prayer
When Adele chose to hold a residency in Munich two years ago, the idea kickstarted the trend for holding huge multiple outdoor concerts where fans would travel from across the globe to see their favourite act: instead of the artist coming to your city, you had to go the distance to see them.
Fatboy Slim to headline Lytham Festival 2027
Superstar DJ and award-winning producer Fatboy Slim will head to the Lancashire coast next summer to headline the North West’s largest live music festival. It has been announced that The Rockafeller Skank and Right Here Right Now star will bring his big beats and incredible live show to Lytham Festival on Friday July 2.
Poem Of The Week: Hilltop By Ruth Sharman
Hilltop You see it sometimes: the way the light strikes a distant hill, singling out that space between trees like a sudden bolt of memory, or an answer coming through from the other side. A benign shock of emergent energy, Ruth Sharman's fine, profoundly distilled poem encourages a sense of the falling away of scales, of belated recognition.
In For A penny…: In A Summer Season By Elizabeth Taylor
The introduction to this novel tells us it is ‘the portrait of a middle-aged, middle-class housewife’, but that does it an injustice because it is so much more. The intro also says that ‘even if a literary work concerns unintellectual subjects, it is, nonetheless, the product of intellect’. How true!
Albums: Westside Cowboy It Goes On
Westside Cowboy’s It Goes On is the kind of album that makes you want to turn the volume up simply to hear where it might take you next. Across its nine tracks, the Manchester band have refined their scrappy, guitar-heavy sound into something that feels both unmistakably British and remarkably fresh.
There is a looseness to the record, but never a lack of purpose. Guitars jangle, grind and collide; melodies appear from the noise; and the songs find poetry in everyday observations without ever making them feel ordinary.
Albums: Mystery Jets A Hole To See The Sky Through
Mystery Jets has returned with A Hole To See The Sky Through, an album that feels like a genuine rediscovery of what makes them such an enduring proposition. Where their recent work sometimes felt weighed down by its own seriousness, this record finds a far more natural balance between reflection and exuberance, bringing back the melodic sparkle, wit and sense of adventure that first made the band so compelling.
Albums: Sam Smith Hazel Eyes
There is plenty to admire here. Hazel Eyes is richly produced and, at its best, allows Smith’s extraordinary voice to breathe rather than simply serve as another component in a maximalist pop production. Everlasting Love opens with a gently fingerpicked guitar and sultry minor chords before Smith’s nimble head voice glides over restrained strings and horns. It is sleek and sophisticated, recalling the understated elegance of Sade without feeling like mere pastiche.
Albums: Jorja Smith- What Are The Odds
Smith's voice remains the star attraction. There is a smoky warmth to it, but also a remarkable precision. She knows when to hold back and when to let a phrase hang in the air, giving even the sparsest moments real weight. Crucially, she never sounds as though she is trying to prove anything.
Albums: Sara Bareilles Good Grief
Written and recording during COVID-19, Bareilles is in a very reflective mood as she tries to understand the world that surrounds her. As she explores the notion of loss, grief, heartbreak and personal breakdowns, she delivers what many may see as an introspective record but in reality is based on the stories of those she knows and those she has read. And the real beauty of this record is that she showcases such deep empathy that they feel so true to her that it is impossible not to connect with the depth of emotion showcased.