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.
Albums: Stella Lefty Long Way Home
Stella Lefty has had a massive 2026. The breakout success of her Noah Kahan-interpolating single, Boston, has seen her achieve the longest-running ever #1 single on the UK country radio charts, but it has also seen her included on the prestigious Country Mount Rushmore for 20
Classical Music: Music for Violin & Piano
Opening this excellently recorded Delphian disc, the sonata is played with a beautiful sensitivity, its lines phrased with real understanding – nowhere more so than in the Romance slow movement, with its rippling piano accompaniment. Every movement is delivered with delectable expression, Burnside's accompaniment judiciously weighed against Foyle's tone, and the emotional core of the piece is never in doubt.
Classical Music: Missy Mazzoli Breaking The Waves
Mazzoli's score is nothing short of genius. The music paints pictures with real creativity and power, and her use of instrumentation to depict particular scenes is marvellous, not least the deployment of melodica, piano, synthesiser and electric guitar alongside the more conventional orchestral palette.
Albums: Steve Hackett & Steve Rothery - The Roaring Waves
Most importantly, The Roaring Waves never feels like a competition between two legendary guitarists. There is no sense of Hackett and Rothery trying to prove who can shred hardest. Instead, the emphasis is on atmosphere, melody and storytelling. That makes the album considerably more involving than a mere virtuoso showcase.
Albums: Cruz Beckham Wear & Tear
Having cited The Beatles, The Stone Roses and David Bowie as key influences, it is clear that Beckham is happy to wear these sounds within his own context, but at one stage does this EP try to simply emulate those artists? He rather marries his key influences with his own Britpop leanings to craft an EP that feels very much his own.
Classical Music: Paganini Violin Concerto
A reviewer who spends years moving between genres and recordings risks a kind of critical fatigue, where superlatives are handed out too readily and end up meaning very little. That's why I keep a mental scorecard, weighing tone, technique, ensemble and interpretation against one another before I let an adjective like 'outstanding' anywhere near a review. Most of the time this keeps me honest.
Albums: Jungle - Sunshine
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With Sunshine, their fifth studio album, they lean further into that identity, delivering a record that feels less interested in reinvention than in perfecting the atmosphere they have made unmistakably their own.
Book Review: Tim Pope - I Shoot Rock Stars
Tim Pope is the visionary director behind some of the most famous pop music videos, including Queen’s It’s A Hard Life and Soft Cell’s Bedsitter besides David Bowie’s 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Gardens in New York in 1997. Of all your favourite videos, Pope was probably the director.
Voice Of The Voiceless: Lee Bainbridge Brings Brighton '84 Home
Ahead of Brighton '84's arrival at Harrogate Theatre, King Brilliant co-founder Lee Bainbridge talks to Group Editor Andrew Palmer about class, comedy and a writing partnership a decade in the making. Mention the Brighton bombing and most people picture the same thing: Margaret Thatcher, the Grand Hotel, a nation holding its breath.
Classical Music: Stephen Hough's Piano Postcards
He opens with his own arrangement of three songs from Sherman's score for Mary Poppins, and the charm is immediate and disarming. Chim Chim Cher-ee is simply delightful — an earworm, yes, but 'bug' feels the wrong word for something arranged with such loving craft. Feed the Birds unfolds in a long, languorous line that carries the listener somewhere else entirely, its trills and decorations enchanting, every phrase touched with real charisma. Then Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious arrives in staccato flurries and glissandos, tying the suite together with something close to genius. One can only think: I wish I were there.
Turnstile Turn The Energy On In Style
Listening to the last Turnstile album, NEVER ENOUGH the record isn’t the best introduction to the band live. The record mixes the ferocity of Rage Against The Machine, the melody of The Offspring and, although they probably would not admit to it, the pop perfection of The Police.
Sparks Fly In York
There are very few bands who could walk onto a stage more than half a century into their career and still make the word conventional feel completely irrelevant. Sparks are one of them. In 2026, Ron and Russell Mael remained gloriously out of step with the rest of the musical world.
When The Orchestra Comes To You: Birmingham's Week Of Music In The Wild
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As the CBSO swaps Symphony Hall for shopping centres, tram loops and the Bullring, chief executive Emma Stenning tells Andrew Palmer why a great orchestra's real stage might be the platform at New Street. There is a particular kind of chaos that only a symphony orchestra can cause in a shopping centre, and Birmingham has had rather a lot of practice at it lat…
Hollywood Vampires Loose None Of Their Bite In Halifax
The Damned arrived on the punk scene fifty years ago when it was seen as rebellious upstarts with songs such as Smash It Up and New Rose. As they took to the stage at the Piece Hall in Halifax, supporting Hollywood Vampires, the original punk rockers appeared to have lost none of their ferocity.
The Archers Marks 75 Years With Major UK Theatre Tour
The village of Ambridge is packing its bags for a nationwide tour, as The Archers marks its 75th anniversary with a brand new live theatrical production bringing Radio 4's best-loved drama out of the studio and onto the stage.
Saltaire Festival To Shine Spotlight On The Mighty Wurlitzer
There can't be many instruments that come with their own lift, but the Mighty Wurlitzer at Victoria Hall, Saltaire, is not many instruments. On Thursday 17th September the theatre pipe organ will take centre stage for a free open day, part of this year's Saltaire Festival.
Tracy Borman On Tudors On Tour: Bringing History's Biggest Soap Opera To The Stage
Best-selling author, historian and broadcaster Professor Tracy Borman OBE chats to Sue Crawford about her forthcoming tour Tudors on Tour What do you find so fascinating about the Tudors? It’s the soap opera that keeps me coming back; the endless drama and the larger-than life personalities. So much happened during this 118-year period.
RIP Queen Dolly: What A Life, What A Woman, What A Legacy
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Today feels like the end of an era. Dolly Parton wasn't simply a singer I loved. She became part of the soundtrack to my life — and, in so many ways, the lives of the people around me. I fell in love with Dolly's music years ago. I was lucky enough to see her in concert, and her songs became woven into some incredibly special memories.
Classical Music: Verdi Requiem
There is an obvious risk in committing a live Verdi Requiem to disc: strip away the theatre of the hall and a performance can shrink. Not here. Captured in spatial audio during three January 2026 performances at Severance Music Center, this new Cleveland Orchestra release loses none of the immediacy of the room, and gains something the audience in the stalls never had — the chance to sit inside the balance itself, with strings and voices arriving from every direction rather than simply from the front.
Classical Music: Grieg Lyric Pieces, Volume 2
Grieg, born in Bergen in 1843 and long celebrated as Norway's National Composer, turned to the piano throughout his career but had little appetite for the German sonata, preferring instead the short forms he called Lyriske stykker — published across ten volumes and steeped in the folk idiom of his homeland. Donohoe has resisted the temptation to record them in sequence, instead ordering the pieces to his own design.
The gamble pays off. This second volume is every bit as delightful as the first, with poetry springing from Donohoe's fingers with a delicacy that borders on illusion — his left hand so controlled you barely notice its work until you try to imagine the music without it.
The Cure Serve Up A Treat In Manchester
As the rays of the descending late summer sun shone over Manchester's Wythenshawe Park, the atmosphere had been perfectly set for the arrival of The Cure.
Vonda Shepard: Still Searching Her Soul, 30 Years On
There are interviews where you arrive with a notebook, a list of questions and a vague sense of professional composure. And then there are interviews where you are speaking to someone whose music has been part of your life for three decades. I was 13 when I first heard Vonda Shepard.
Albums: The Script - The User’s Guide To Being Human
The Script has never been shy about wearing their hearts on their sleeves, but The User’s Guide To Being Human feels like the Dublin band have ripped the sleeves off altogether.
Albums: Brandon Flowers Thraser
The Killers frontman’s connection with country runs deep, rooted in childhood journeys through Utah with his father, soundtracked by the likes of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. That history gives the album an authenticity that goes beyond simply adding pedal steel and acoustic guitars to a rock record. Flowers understands the storytelling tradition at the heart of the country, using it to revisit memories, places and experiences while giving them his own unmistakable voice.