Albums: Ella Hooper Overnight Success
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Killing Heidi was only the beginning. Hooper subsequently explored a folkier side with The Verses alongside Jesse, before embarking on a solo career that has seen her continually experiment with an array of genres and sonic landscapes. Overnight Success, her fourth solo album, finds her drawing all of those experiences together and planting herself firmly in the Americana and country sphere.
Albums: Vonda Shepard Nine Songs
There has never been any sense of Vonda Shepard rushing to put out a record simply for the sake of having something new to say. Instead, she has always seemed more interested in maintaining the remarkable bond she has built with her live audience, whilst allowing herself the time and space to follow her own creative process. New music arrives when it is ready — and, on Nine Songs, that patience has once again paid off.
Albums: Echo & The Bunnymen – Apples For Isaac
Apples for Isaac isn't trying to be their classic album Ocean Rain again. Nor should it. Those records belong to another time. What matters here is that Echo & the Bunnymen have found a way to acknowledge their history without allowing it to dictate their future.
Classical Music: Requiem Da Camera, For St Cecilia & In Terra Pax
The disc is the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge's thirtieth for Hyperion, and the first since Steven Grahl took up the baton as director of music. Any anxiety that the choir's famously burnished sound might falter in the changeover can be laid to rest within a few bars. If anything, it has acquired a fresh bloom. Tone, diction, soloists, accompaniment and Hyperion's characteristically sumptuous engineering are first-class from every angle, and the whole has the feeling of a choir singing music it loves.
Classical Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams From Ursula, With Love
The story behind it is as touching as the music. Ursula Vaughan Williams kept these recordings, and in 1996 she passed them to Stephen Connock, at that time chairman of the RVW Society, so that it could eventually release them. Of the seventeen tracks, fourteen are getting their first commercial release, while the remaining three appear to have been taken from a BBC transmission. Hence the title: From Ursula, with Love.
Albums: Europe- Come This Madness
Nine years is a long time between albums, even for a band with more than four decades of history behind them. But Europe returns from that lengthy silence, sounding less like a group resting on its reputation and more like one with something left to prove.
Classical Music: Franck Quintet Enescu Octet
Two decades separate the works on this disc, yet César Franck's Piano Quintet and George Enescu's Octet make natural companions. Both push chamber music to the edge of the symphonic, both build vast structures from a handful of recurring ideas, and both demand players who can sustain intensity over long spans. Recorded at Nordstrom Recital Hall in Seattle and produced by Simon Kiln, the album features violinist James Ehnes, artistic director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society, at the head of a hand-picked ensemble of colleagues.
Classical Music: Granville Bantock Orchestral Works
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Rumon Gamba and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra are on top form, attentive to every nuance and playing with real elegance. Every section excels, the tutti passages are well controlled, and the lower strings and percussion add richness to the sound. Chandos provides a warm, detailed recording. Bantock's parents had other plans for him, and English music is richer for their disappointment.
Sugababes announce March 2027 UK Tour!
Sugababes have announced a run of major UK live shows for March, bringing their celebrated catalogue and new music to fans in Birmingham, Glasgow, London and Manchester.
Will Young celebrates 25 years of Evergreen with tour announcement
One of Britain’s most-beloved soul pop voices, the multi-award winning artist Will Young, has announced The Evergreen 25th Anniversary Tour – a celebratory 16-date tour across the UK with his full band, performing all the hits across his two-decade-plus journey in music. The tour kicks off in February 2027, coinciding with 25 years since Will’s landmark Pop Idol win.
Hits Radio Live 2026 at Manchester’s Co-op Live is SOLD OUT!
Hits Radio has today announced the huge line-up for a sold-out Hits Radio Live 2026, returning to Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena on Saturday November 21st. Fleur East, Will Best and James Barr revealed live on air this morning [Monday 28th September that tickets have officially sold out! Now the only way to secure a spot at this epic event is to win!
Deja Vu: “We’re Peak Living Right Now”
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Deja Vu are feeling very much on top of the world. The British-Venezuelan girl group – Elle Botterill, Carolina Diaz and Tyrece Lewis – admit that their current run of success feels surreal, particularly as they are touring alongside one of their biggest influences, the Pussycat Dolls. “We just can’t believe what’s actually going on. It’s insane,” they say. “It’s surreal, definitely.
Albums: Anthrax - Cursum Perficio
T.O.M.B. and Watch It Go subsequently restore some of the album’s muscular momentum before My Victory brings proceedings to a suitably emphatic close.
Definitely worth the ten year wait.
Classical Music: Bruch Violin Concerto No 1
Few violin concertos have been recorded as often as Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor, Op 26. It is a perennial favourite and has more than once topped Classic FM's Hall of Fame, so any new recording has plenty of competition. The Norwegian violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing's version on Sony Classical, with the Oslo Philharmonic under Gergely Madaras, earns its place.
Classical Music: Neeme Järvi Conducts Shostakovich
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Few composers carry as many contradictions as Dmitri Shostakovich. He could write music of crushing weight and bleak introspection, then turn out a ballet number or a popular song arrangement with a wink and a flourish. Any collection that aims to present him whole has to do justice to both sides. Chandos's eight-CD reissue of Neeme Järvi's recordings with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra does exactly that, and it makes an excellent introduction to the composer for newcomers as well as a rewarding return for those who already know him.
Classical Music: Kin
There is so much to enjoy here. Above all, Betts-Dean draws out the story in every song, just as folk music should. Picture a group of friends gathered round while one of them spins a tale, and you have the spirit of this disc. It is all achieved through a keen ear for tempo and a finely judged use of dynamics, never through over-egging.
Classical Music: Mentor And Muse: Songs By Vaughan Williams And The Women Around Him
For any lover of English song this is a disc to cherish. At its heart lie the songs of Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams, heard alongside the man who taught them both, Ralph Vaughan Williams. Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist William Vann have performed together for several years, and they kept returning to Vaughan Williams's orbit. Above all, they were drawn to the women who wrote the music and verse he knew so well. What emerges is a picture of a teacher, his pupils and his friends, each with a voice entirely their own.
Albums: Tygers Of Pan Tang - Electrifyed
On the album the veteran North East metal outfit once again proves that age is no barrier to volume, attitude or a riff capable of leaving scorch marks.
Twenty Years Of Squalor: Keith Murray On We Are Scientists, University Nights And The Art Of Time Travel
There are albums you listen to, and there are albums that become attached to a particular version of yourself. For me, We Are Scientists' With Love & Squalor belongs firmly in the latter category.
Albums: Max McNown Leave On A Light
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The Nashville singer-songwriter’s third studio album is a significant step forward from his first two records. Across 17 tracks, McNown expands the boundaries of his sound, moving beyond the more straightforward country foundations of his earlier work and into something considerably more fluid: part indie, part folk, part country, with flashes of pop that give the album a broader, more contemporary reach.
Albums: Keo Put A Smile On For Me
For a debut, that is an exciting prospect. Put A Smile On For Me is compelling and refreshing, establishing Keo as a band with huge potential while already delivering enough evidence of that potential in the present. The Nirvana comparisons may have raised expectations before the record even arrived, but Keo have answered them in the best possible way: by sounding like themselves.
Albums: Big Country Redux Eastworld
Twenty-five years on from Stuart Adamson’s death, Big Country returns in a new guise: Big Country Redux. The name is an appropriately reflective one for Eastworld, a ten-track collection that reaches back into the band’s archives to resurrect songs Adamson wrote or co-wrote with Bruce Watson and former bassist Tony Butler. Some will be familiar to long-standing fans through live performances, demos and lesser-known releases; others have spent decades waiting for the treatment they receive here.
Albums: Lawrence Rothman Here Lies Love/Sawdust To Stardust
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There is something nocturnal about the album. Even when the music opens into the wide horizons of Americana, there are clouds gathering at the edges. Country, folk and rock mingle with more elusive textures, but nothing feels neatly contained. The songs drift, shimmer and bruise, carrying the weight of things remembered and things that perhaps cannot be forgotten. Rothman draws from the language of Americana without becoming bound by it, turning its familiar roads and landscapes into something stranger and more inward.
Albums: Carly Rae Jepsen Day and Night
There is a particular magic to Carly Rae Jepsen that only really makes sense when you see her live. I caught her on her last UK tour, and she effortlessly proved herself to be one of the best pop performers I’ve seen: completely at ease on stage, utterly committed to the songs and capable of turning a roomful of people into one giant, euphoric chorus.
THE BRIT FEST unveils it's biggest main stage line-up for 2027!
The multi-award-winning festival returns with four unforgettable days of live music, discovery, entertainment and shared summer memories. The Brit Fest, the multi-award-winning independent festival, has unveiled an outstanding main stage line-up for 2027, bringing together some of the most recognisable names in British music alongside exciting rising talent.
Alex Warren announces Finding (More) Family On The Road
GRAMMY® Award-nominated, chart-topping multi-platinum artist Alex Warren has announced a major run of outdoor shows across the UK and Europe for summer 2027, including a huge London headline show at Crystal Palace Park Live on Saturday 3 July.
Hits Radio Live 2026 - Birmingham Line-Up Announced!
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Leee John: Still Learning, Still Creating, Still Proud and Bold
Leee John is tired. Not tired enough to stop, though. “I’m a little bit tired, I’m a little bit…” he laughs, reaching for a phrase. “I’m sounding like Donny and Marie now — I’m a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.” He has just performed the night before and has been flying around the place, with the constant changes in weather beginning to catch up with him.
Mozart And Vivaldi Top The Classical Playlist In Hull This Autumn
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Mozart and Beethoven have been voted the top choice composers that Hull residents are interested in exploring or learning more about over the next 12 months, according to new research.
Two Journeys, One Wurlitzer: Engineer And Virtuoso Share Victoria Hall Console
Saltaire's Mighty Wurlitzer will host an unlikely double act on Sunday 11th October at 2.30pm, as a Royal College of Music-trained concert organist and the engineer who restored the instrument itself take turns at the console.