Reviews

Bass Persuades

Miley Cyrus drops her surname and nearly everything else on *Bass Persuades* — a hedonistic dance-pop concept that's too cold to move and too vague to matter.

Pylon

Beabadoobee turns mid-twenties dread into her most forceful record yet — abrasive, melodic, and quietly braver than almost anything else released this year.

Lost Weekend

Phoebe Bridgers returns after six years with her most precise, devastating record yet — grief, heartbreak, and hard-won hope across seventeen quietly extraordin

petal

Ariana Grande's eighth album has real ideas and a couple of genuine standout moments — but *petal* too often blinks before it can bloom into the feral record it

Music, Fashion, Film

Charli XCX's eighth album is 30 minutes of precise, strange, utterly confident pop — and the best thing she's made since *brat*.

Emotional Junglist

Nia Archives rewinds a turbulent year into 15 tracks of gutsy, guitar-flecked pop that expands jungle's emotional logic without a single breakbeat wasted.

Frozen Charlotte

Jack White's bluesiest record since De Stijl is a blunt, emotionally raw barrage — brilliant in bursts, punishing in repetition, and honest throughout.

CONFESSIONS II

Madonna returns after seven years with something better than a disaster and considerably less than a triumph — *CONFESSIONS II* is frustratingly, repeatedly alm

you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love

Rodrigo's boldest album yet: a split-screen love story and autopsy that earns every one of its gut-punches — and sends you straight back to track one.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane

McCartney's Liverpool memoir has real emotional gold buried inside it — the trouble is you'll spend too long digging through the filler to reach it.

ICEMAN

Drake's ninth studio album has moments of genuine brilliance buried beneath eighteen tracks of uneven ambition — proving he's still capable, if not quite hungry

Middle of Nowhere

Kacey Musgraves strips back the cosmic shimmer and replaces it with pedal steel and hard-won quiet — *Middle of Nowhere* is her most country, most herself recor

The Great Divide

Noah Kahan's fourth album has real fire in it — "Doors" and "Porch Light" prove that — but at 77 minutes, *The Great Divide* is too in love with its own ambitio

Dandelion

Ella Langley's second album is atmospheric, well-crafted, and slightly too long — a record full of real talent still searching for its sharpest edges.

Wolf Alice at Royal Albert Hall, London

Wolf Alice closed the 2026 Teenage Cancer Trust series at the Royal Albert Hall with a performance so emotionally charged and musically fearless it felt genuine

THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.

RAYE's sprawling second album contains genuine brilliance — but at 17 tracks and 70 minutes, it asks more than it always earns.

Sexistential

Robyn's ninth album is flawed, fascinating, and rewards patience — but at under thirty minutes, it occasionally feels like it's still finding its nerve.

sombr at Aviva Studios, Manchester

Sixty-six shows into his debut headline run, sombr brought the Warehouse to a standstill in Manchester — and made it look completely effortless.

Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.

Harry Styles' fourth album is a thrillingly imperfect disco-pop statement — "Aperture" alone justifies the hype, and the rest mostly keeps pace.

The Mountain

Gorillaz's *The Mountain* is a sprawling, surprising triumph — twenty-six years in and Damon Albarn is still asking questions nobody else thought to pose.

Nothing's About to Happen to Me

Mitski's eighth album is a gothic character study that's wrenching, darkly funny, and built to reward repeated listening — one of her finest yet.

THAT'S SHOWBIZ BABY! THE ENCORE

Jade Thirlwall's deluxe debut is 22 tracks of disciplined, joyful, Frankenstein pop perfection — and the most self-assured solo statement of the year.

Lorde at AO Arena, Manchester

Lorde opened the UK leg of the Ultrasound Tour in Manchester with a setlist that trusted its audience, a stage stripped to its bones, and a performance that had

GIRLS

Princess Nokia's *GIRLS* is a razor-sharp, 33-minute thesis on femininity that confirms she's one of rap's most essential and uncompromising voices.

Will Smith at Civic Hall, Wolverhampton

Will Smith brings his first tour in decades to Wolverhampton for a night that's stranger, warmer, and more alive than it had any right to be. 7/10.

The Clearing

Wolf Alice's fourth album is quieter, slower and braver than anything that came before it — a record that knows exactly what it's doing and trusts you to keep u

Oasis at Heaton Park, Manchester

Liam and Noel walked out hand in hand and fifty thousand people lost their minds. Oasis's Heaton Park return wasn't nostalgia — it was correction.

BRAT

Charli XCX's sixth album is confrontational, vulnerable and completely sui generis — the sound of an artist who's stopped asking for permission and started sett

Messy

Olivia Dean's debut is precise, warm, and emotionally generous — 'Carmen' alone is worth the price of admission, and the rest isn't far behind.