Caroline Sullivan
Gabrielle Aplin: English Rain - review
To all intents, Wiltshire's Gabrielle Aplin came out of nowhere – at the start of 2012, she was self-releasing feathery relationship ballads; by December, she was at No 1 with a cover of The Power of Love, as heard in the John Lewis Christmas ad.
Little Boots: Nocturnes - review
(On Repeat) Why doesn't Victoria " Little Boots " Hesketh have her own Robyn esque cult of admirers? Both women create sparkling electropop that expertly balances euphoria and darkness, and both can write a ferocious chorus. Yet her promising start - sh
Marc Almond/Ten Plagues - review
In the programme for Ten Plagues, Marc Almond professes to having always been "very much a verse-chorus-middle-eight kind of person" – not the sort who would gravitate toward a song cycle inspired by the Great Plague of London. Yet here he is, in periwiBo Bruce: Before I Sleep - review
(Mercury) Lady Catherine Brudenell-Bruce should have thought twice before changing her name in pursuit of a pop career. It gave her a point of difference from Sinead O'Connor and Dolores O'Riordan, with whom she shares a tremulous, vulnerable vocal sty
will.i.am: #willpower - review
(Interscope) That hashtag directs the mind back to the Olympic torch procession, when will.i.am managed to fire off a string of tweets while carrying the flame through Taunton . That self-serving attitude also attends the Black Eyed Pea's first solo alb
Phoenix: Bankrupt! - review
(Atlantic) Bankrupt? Not unless they've spent it all on monogrammed Porsches. If anything, the success of Phoenix's last album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - which finally brought them big success, after nine years of trying - means the French four-pieceThe Neighbourhood: I Love You - review
(Columbia) Although the words to the song Afraid - "You tell me I don't like you/ Fuck you anyway, you make me wanna scream at the top of my lungs" - might suggest the Neighbourhood's singer and main lyricist, Jesse Rutherford, can't be older than 14, t
Françoise Hardy: L'Amour Fou – review
Heaven knows what grimness Google Translate would wreak on Françoise Hardy's 27th album, which is entirely in French. It's dense with words, both spoken and sung, as befits a record that was conceived as a "soundtrack" to a novel, also titled L'Amour FouAngel: About Time - review
(Island) "I coulda been one of them guys locked in a cell," are the first words on Sirach "Angel" Charles's debut, painting an unwontedly thuggish picture of this Shepherd's Bush singer/writer/producer . Apart from having once spent time in jail on rem