Album Review
Editors, Surface, Echo & Sound: Finding warmth in familiar territory
Editors find warmth in familiar territory on Surface, Echo & Sound, with strong melodies and a more organic sound.
Galleries & Reviews
Live photography, live reviews and album reviews.
Live Review
Allie X Brings Dark Pop and Technicolour to KOKO
There was plenty of colour inside KOKO on Thursday night. The audience brought a youthful energy and a real sense of individuality, an interesting contrast to the darker aesthetic of the evening’s headline act. Allie X’s gothic-leaning approach to pop, with its theatrical presentation, electronic textures and infectious melodies, gave the evening a distinct identity.
Album Review
Queens of the Stone Age, Perfecth: The sound of letting go
Queens of the Stone Age have always understood that a great rock song needs more than a great riff. Their best work has a peculiar tension to it, with grooves that feel slightly unstable, guitars that threaten to turn ugly and Josh Homme’s dry delivery keeping everything just shy of collapse. On Perfecth, the band test what happens when that tension comes from somewhere other than volume.
Live Review
TOMORA at the Roundhouse: When Two Musical Worlds Collide
At 9pm sharp, a robotic voice addressed the Roundhouse crowd. TOMORA would like to welcome everyone on an adventure, it announced, before declaring the venue a safe space and beginning a countdown. Pink neon illuminated the stage. Thirty seconds later, the adventure began.
The Devil Wears Prada
The Devil Wears Prada photographed at Electric Brixton, London, on 23 October 2026.
Angine de Poitrine
Angine de Poitrine photographed at Troxy, London, on 19 October 2026.
Live Review
The Devil Wears Prada Aren’t Finished Yet
When The Devil Wears Prada formed in Dayton, Ohio, in 2005, metalcore was entering a period of rapid growth, with bands pushing the genre beyond its hardcore foundations. More than two decades and nine studio albums later, the band are still finding room to change direction. Their latest album, Flowers, is the reason for their current European headline tour, which brought them to Electric Brixton on Friday night, with Novelists, 156/Silence and Oversize on the bill.
Album Review
HMLTD – FANGS
HMLTD spent a year making an indie album, finished it, hated it and deleted the lot. It is an unusually expensive way to discover what a band stands for, but the decision tells you plenty about *FANGS*. Their third album abandons the conventional guitar-band format for something far more volatile, dragging goth through the club until the two become difficult to separate.
Live Review
Angine De Poitrine at Troxy
Angine de Poitrine take the intricate rhythms of math rock and push them into microtonal, psychedelic territory. At Troxy, the triangles went up, the mosh pits opened and the polka dots spread from the stage into the crowd.
Album Review
Foo Fighters: Your Favorite Toy review
Foo Fighters strip things back to a louder, punk-influenced sound on Your Favorite Toy. Their twelfth album has bite, even when the songwriting is uneven.
Album Review
Tigercub: Nets to Catch the Wind review
Tigercub balance thick riffs and towering choruses with a more open sound on Nets to Catch the Wind. A frequently exciting fourth album, held back by familiar dynamics.
Album Review
Modern Woman, ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ Review: The Beauty in the Unsettling
Modern Woman understand that a song can be beautiful and still make you uncomfortable. The London band’s debut thrives on these contradictions.
Album Review
Violet Grohl, ‘Be Sweet to Me’ Review: The Influences Outshine the Songs
Be Sweet to Me draws heavily on the alternative rock of the 1990s, moving between grunge, fuzzy guitar pop and hazier, more introspective passages.
Album Review
Fontaines D.C., ‘Dopamine Chamber’: The Strange Comfort of Disappearing
Fontaines D.C. have made a record about the ways we try to escape ourselves, then built the music to make that escape sound seductive.
Live Review
Damian Lewis at The Garage
Damian Lewis has a second act, and he's taking it seriously.
Damian Lewis at The Garage
Damian Lewis photographed at The Garage, London, on 14 October 2026.
Live Review
Creeper Bring Their Vampire World to Kentish Town
Black face make-up, pale complexions and dark eyes gave Creeper’s audience a distinctly gothic look at O2 Forum Kentish Town.
Album Review
Meryl Streek, ‘Stories They Don’t Teach You At School’: Punk With Something at Stake
Meryl Streek confronts housing inequality, institutional failure, mental health and grief on Stories They Don’t Teach You At School.
Album Review
unpeople – we are unpeople: Hooks, Heavy Riffs and a Question of Restraint
Strong hooks and heavy riffs make unpeople’s debut an immediate listen, though a little restraint could give its best moments more room.
Live Review
Palaye Royale Return to Barfly Ahead of Wembley
The Barfly is packed. The 200-capacity Camden room has people pressed against the stage, around the bar and into every available space when Palaye Royale walk on.
The Small Fortunes
The Small Fortunes photographed at The Garage, London, on 2 October 2026.
Live Review
The Small Fortunes
The Garage is a room with nowhere to hide. On Friday night, it was sold out as The Small Fortunes brought their UK tour to London, with the Warrington band taking the stage just a few years after their first live show in December 2023.
Album Review
Greg Freeman, All Set the Bone Review
A record that takes risks with its sound and structure, and largely succeeds because Freeman doesn’t seem interested in making those risks more palatable.
Album Review
Walt Disco, Walt Disco Review
Walt Disco is a rawer, heavier record than the band have made before, but their instinct for a big melody remains intact.
Album Review
Dead Poet Society, ‘Monarch’ Review: When the Familiar Starts to Feel Wrong
Dead Poet Society make alternative rock sound distinctly uneasy on Monarch.
Album Review
Man/Woman/Chainsaw, ‘Cannonball’ Review: Art-Pop With a Taste for Chaos
Man/Woman/Chainsaw have little interest in keeping things tidy.
Album Review
Chelsea Wolfe, ‘The Dark’ Review: Finding Strength in the Shadows
There is a different kind of intensity to Chelsea Wolfe’s The Dark.
Album Review
MOULD, ‘Hoping as a Coping Mechanism’ Review: Controlled Chaos With Something to Say
MOULD’s debut album is restless by design.
Album Review
Modest Mouse, ‘An Eraser and a Maze’ Review: Too Many Ideas, Not Enough Payoff
On An Eraser and a Maze, that unpredictability returns, but the distinction between a song taking an unexpected turn and a song that hasn’t quite come together becomes harder to ignore.
Album Review
Evanescence, ‘Sanctuary’ Review: A Heavier Sound With Plenty Left to Prove
Evanescence have never been short of drama, but Sanctuary gives that instinct a harder, more contemporary edge.
Live Review
Pale Waves at KOKO
Pale Waves formed in Manchester in 2014, when Heather Baron-Gracie and Ciara Doran met while studying at BIMM Manchester.
Pale Waves at KOKO
Pale Waves photographed at KOKO, London, on 25 September 2026.
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys photographed at The Lexington, London, on 26 March 2026.
Live Review
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys
There’s a certain kind of crowd that gathers at The Lexington for shows like this. Not loud, not restless, just quietly expectant.
Live Review
Tori Amos at Royal Albert Hall
There are artists you see live, and then there are artists who completely take over a room. Tori Amos at Royal Albert Hall is one of them.
Live Review
Muse at O2 Brixton Academy, London
Muse returning to Brixton Academy was never really about nostalgia.
Live Review
YUNGBLUD at the O2
I went into Yungblud at the O2 with a fair amount of scepticism.
Live Review
Skunk Anansie at The Water Rats
For one night, Skunk Anansie went back to being S.C.A.M again.
BST Hyde Park 2026
Mumford & Sons, CAAMP and Holly Humberstone photographed at BST Hyde Park on 4 July 2026.
Chance Peña at Roundhouse
Chance Peña photographed at Roundhouse, London, on 20 May 2026.
Live Review
Chance Peña at Roundhouse
Chance Peña at the Roundhouse felt far bigger than I expected from an artist I had only properly discovered last year.
Glen Hansard at Roundhouse
Glen Hansard photographed at the Roundhouse, London, on 23 May 2026.
Live Review
Glen Hansard at Roundhouse
Glen Hansard brought his Don’t Settle era to the Roundhouse with a set that felt messy, loud, strange and far more alive than a nostalgic greatest-hits show.
Dermot Kennedy at The O2
Dermot Kennedy photographed at The O2, London, on 6 June 2026.
Live Review
Dermot Kennedy at The O2
Dermot Kennedy brought the scale of The Weight of the Woods Tour to The O2 while knowing exactly when to step back and let the songs speak for themselves.
Live Review
Sofia Isella at Roundhouse
Sofia Isella closed her Her Desire, The Nemesis tour at the Roundhouse with a performance that blurred poetry, theatre and collective ownership of the songs.
Live Review
Dogstar at Roundhouse
Dogstar’s Roundhouse show unfolded without self-importance, letting patience, space and the trio’s easy camaraderie carry the evening.
Dogstar at Roundhouse
Dogstar photographed at the Roundhouse, London, during the band’s All In Now tour on 13 June 2026.
Brigitte Calls Me Baby
Brigitte Calls Me Baby on stage at KOKO, London, on 15 September 2026, photographed during the Chicago band’s UK headline tour.
Live Review
The Neighbourhood at OVO Arena
The Neighbourhood have been around for more than a decade, but looking around OVO Arena Wembley, the audience skewed noticeably younger than the band’s history might suggest.
Live Review
My Chemical Romance at Wembley Stadium
My Chemical Romance turned Wembley into a carefully staged procession, a communal reunion and a vivid return to the world of The Black Parade.
Live Review
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at Preston Park
For a few days Brighton became Nick Cave’s city, culminating in an intense Preston Park performance and a surprise appearance from Kylie Minogue.
Live Review
Mumford & Sons at BST Hyde Park
Mumford & Sons returned to BST Hyde Park for a festival day that built from emerging artists to surprise appearances by Hozier and Shania Twain.
Live Review
Brigitte Calls Me Baby
Chicago’s Brigitte Calls Me Baby brought a darker, slightly theatrical edge to KOKO, with Tom A Smith opening the show.
Live Review
Jon Batiste at KOKO
Songs of Hope and Change brought collaboration, generosity and moments of genuine beauty to the third night of Jon Batiste’s KOKO residency.
Jon Batiste at KOKO
Jon Batiste photographed at KOKO, London, during the third night of his four-night residency, Songs of Hope and Change, on 26 June 2026.