Music

A review of The Crux: Djo turns music into a profession

In his new album, The Crux, Djo, aka Joe Keery, perfectly inhabits and evokes peak 70s McCartney. At the same time, he seamlessly drifts between the sonics of ELO...

Fontaines DC and the (re) rise of indie Sleaze

I recently took to my finsta to post a story claiming that the Fontaines...

Death of the Album, rise of the playlist

The album, once the definitive artistic statement in music, is being increasingly overshadowed by...

Mac Miller grapples with mortality on ‘Balloonerism’

When the 'D' rings out from the organ on the dream-like second track of...

Lose Yourself: A Sign of the Times

If you want to feel the sensation of your skin crawling, watching Eminem’s unexpected performance of ‘Lose Yourself’ at the Oscars should certainly do...

Review: Billie Eilish’s ‘No Time to Die’

After taking the international music scene by storm, eighteen year old Billie Eilish can now add writing and producing the new Bond theme song,...

An Ode to Trixie Mattel

If someone were to bring up ‘drag music’, the likelihood is that your first thought would sound a little something like 2:30am on a...

Tegan & Sara’s ‘Hey, I’m Just Like You’: a Queer Coming of Age

When Tegan and Sara Quin signed with Neil Young’s Vapor Records in 1999, they were a novelty on the male-dominated indie scene. The identical...

Review: Taylor Swift’s ‘Miss Americana’

Taylor Swift’s last album, Reputation, was an unapologetically  aggressive response to the ‘drama’ that she had endured during nearly a decade in the...

Marika Hackman and queer sexuality in music

Bolshy, brazen and unapologetically sexual – in Oxford, the first group of people to spring to mind from this description is likely to be...

From Kampala With Love

At its Southern extremities, the River Nile flows from Lake Victoria into the plains of Uganda as the Victoria Nile. The city of Jinja...

Review: Wire’s ‘Mind Hive’

Wire are a band that don’t like nostalgia, unlike most mainstream cultural figures. So much so, that they have been known to take...

The music of Little Women

For the characters in Greta Gerwig’s recent film adaptation of Little Women (2019), music is an essential part of their lives. Beth (the third...

Review: Frank Turner’s ‘Love, Ire & Song’

Frank Turner is an interesting character. Somehow famous enough to play Wembley and the Olympic opening ceremony, but not quite famous enough that...

Songs for the Sadgirl

Whether it’s due to a lack of sunlight that no SAD lamp can remedy, the post-December comedown, or the onslaught of Hilary term...

In conversation: Ross McNae, Twin Atlantic

In the heart of the Glaswegian alternative music scene circa 2006, Sam McTrusty, Ross McNae, Craig Kneale and Barry McKenna formed the rock outfit...

BRITs come in last place for gender equality

The 40th edition of the BRIT Awards is fast approaching, and with it, concerns over the lack of female nominees in mixed-gender categories are...

Review: Dustin Lynch’s Tullahoma

After an initial scan through the track-list for Tennessee-born country artist Dustin Lynch’s Tullahoma, you could be forgiven for presuming this is going...

Sung Sikyung: an ode to the Korean balladist

I often get asked whether I listen to K-pop. Although I answer “yes,'' I hate getting this question. In part this is because people...

Kate Tempest: the protest voice of a generation

“The whole thing’s becoming/Such a bumbling farce/Was that a pivotal historical moment/We just went stumbling past?” Not enough people have heard of Kate Tempest. These...

Star People: unearthing Miles Davis’ jazz-rock family tree

By the mid-60s, jazz was floundering. The preceding decade saw bebop – the most radical post-war interpretation of the breed – birth several pioneering...

Jazz Society launch record label

Oxford University Jazz Society have welcomed in the new year with the announcement of the launch of their new independent record label, JazzSoc Records. Describing...

Girls to the Front: a brief history of Women in Rock

It is encouraging news that, according to a 2018 study by the guitar manufacturer Fender, 50% of new guitarists in the US and UK...

Review: Vampire Weekend

Nine years after they last took Muswell Hill by storm, indie giants Vampire Weekend played a two-night engagement at London’s Alexandra Palace as part...