The Brown Note Movie Review

The Beekeeper (2024) Movie Review

A welcome throwback to the days Jason Statham action films weren't The Fast and the Furious related, though director David Ayer misses an opportunity to lean fully into what's great about it and create a classic of the genre.

Perfect 10’s: Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (1997) Album Review

After Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, my second favorite album of all time, regards drug addiction and obsessive love as the same thing as religion, in a 1997 album actually superior to OK Computer.

Burial - Dreamfear/Boy Sent From Above (2024) EP Review

Arguably the most important British electronic music artist this side of the Aphex Twin, returns, not with ambient whale noises, but two absolute bangers. Can it be true!? Oh Happy Day!

Gone But Forgotten: Walter Wegmüller – Tarot (1973) Album Review

My intermittent series on albums denied classic status at the time or forgotten from the conversation since. Here the outlier to Krautrock's astonishing Cosmic Joker releases, where some of the finest mainland Europe musicians to ever play 'rock' music, wound up being in a band they didn't even know about, but did release two proper collaborative works. One with LSD guru Timothy Leary (7UP) and this vastly superior double album, by mystic, artist and Tarot card reader, Walter Wegmüller. Featuring flat out geniuses like Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching, exploring space-rock, psych-folk, drone, Psych-funk and post-rock, in a stunning double album.

The Oscar Nominations 2024

A few thoughts on one of the more controversial Oscar noms lists.

Maestro (2023) Film Review

Boasting career best performances from Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper, and a massive step up for the latter as a director, a very high class entry into the best picture Oscar race with the Leonard Bernstein biopic.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) Movie Review

The much delayed sequel has an atrocious daggy single dad start, where they manage to lose both sides of the Amber Heard argument, but given my low expectations, ends up one of the better post Endgame, comic-book super-hero watches. Unlike The Marvels, it actually looks like they spent MORE than $200 million on the spectacular visual design.

The Smile - Wall Of Eyes (2024) Album Review

The second from the frankly pointless Radiohead side project, that may as well just be Radiohead, is slightly better than their excellent debut, A Light For Attracting Attention. A more cohesive whole a the years first great album. Straight white indie boys can get best new music from Pitchfork. If your name is Thom Yorke.

Perfect 10’s: Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel The Illinoise (2005) Album Review

My irregular feature on outstanding masterpieces touches down (after another pinnacle year for Stevens with his latest high-water mark album, Javelin) with the album that made his name, still one of the most ambitious and successful album length projects this century.

The Decline And Fall Of Pitchfork Magazine: Or How Going Woke Really Did Go Broke

Pitchfork music magazine has apparently been executed, the century's most important music bible being folded into GQ magazine by its evil corporate overlord Conde Nast. As a devout consumer of Pitchfork since the turn of the century, I've been predicting this for the last five years - the post Fetch the Bolt Cutters years, but really the five years that editor in chief Puja Patel has been in charge, and until I hear otherwise, misguidedly shaped the direction of Pitchfork into oblivion. Conde Nast bought Pitchfork over a decade ago and it survived, it's the direction the publication took under Patel that killed it. Sidelining music that was it's core audience to promote music for people that never even read Pitchfork. A sad day.