Interscope Vinyl & CDs

Review: Being a 'supergroup' - as Boygenius trio Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus are commonly described - has its pitfalls, one of which is finding time to record and promote your music. It was for this reason that it took the threesome almost five years to record their debut album, The Record, which was released to critical acclaim (the NME called it an 'instant indie classic') earlier this year. The fact that 'The Rest', an EP of unheard songs (literally - no previews were available online prior to release), has followed so quickly suggests that it was recorded at the same time. Either way, it was produced by the band alongside a team of six producers) and delivers more memorable songs in their now familiar American indie-rock style. A treat for fans, all told.

Review: Effective communication relies on being succinct. Boygenius clearly know this given their track record for naming things. 2023 saw the trio - Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus - drop their debut album, The Record, and now, a few months down the line, we have The Rest: an EP made up of the other bits that didn't quite make said LP.

If you're completely new to the band, then let's start by saying these offcuts that didn't fit would put many a group to shame, which tells you just how good the full record is. Here, though, we have the lo-fi, dream-indie-pop crackle and fuzz of 'Black Hole', a track of huge emotional resonance, heartfelt, heartbroken yet hopeful semi-folk on 'Afraid of Heights', and the delicate, tender, and incredibly personal letting go balladry of 'Voyager', just for starters. Sublime confirmation Boygenius are your new favourite thing.

Review: American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey's seventh album Chemtrails Over the Country Club features a cover of Joni Mitchell's 1970 song 'For Free' but otherwise features lyrics that pertain to her "stunning girlfriends" and "beautiful siblings." The sound of the record is therefore more airy and sunny, expansive and less claustrophobic that previous works. This lighter sound suits her - not that previous album aren't also essential - with an emotional innocence and vulnerability shining through each song. Folky, nuanced and atmospheric, this might be one of Del Ray's best yet.

Review: Alongside De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory and Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Dr Dre's solo debut album, The Chronic, is one of the few hip-hop sets that genuinely changed the genre in the months and years after it was released. Three decades on from its original release, it has lost none of its allure - as this celebratory reissue proves. Built on distinctive 'G-funk' beats that heavily reference his hero, George Clinton, a wealth of killer samples, and raps from the cream of the then West Coast scene (his old pal Snoop Dogg is the most prominent voice throughout), it's a kaleidoscopic and sonically vibrant excursion that's every bit as essential now as it was back in 1993.

Review: Around 2005 when the first edition of Curtain Call came out, we were reflecting on Eminem's meteoric ascendance to the premier league of hip-hop. Back then, all his beats were either produced by himself or with Dr. Dre, and there was a definitive arc to his sound. Moving on, there have been lengthy pauses, sideways swerves and surprise turns as Marshall Mathers follows his own path, and as such it's a fine time for a second greatest hits compilation to cast a glance back over some of the best Eminem joints of the past 17 years. There are plenty of dazzling guest spots from Beyonce and Rihanna to Snoop Dogg and Kehlani, but the best is when you can hear Em himself in full flow, doing what he does best.

Review: RECOMMENDED
The fact Imagine Dragons tangibly slowed things down in the past year or two has nothing to do with the deadly virus that single-handedly stopped life as we all knew it. The outfit had done four albums in six years, records arriving between non-stop touring schedules and each giving birth to a series of big hit singles. It's a story of runaway success, but those almost always lead to burnout.

With this in mind, Mercury: Act 1 is the band refocused, re-energised and musically reformed. Enlisting the services of super producer Rick Rubin, a guy known for switching things up in terms of an artist or band's style, he certainly lives up to those expectations here. Yes, it remains staunchly pop driven by tribal, fist pounding drums and choruses that should be sung in rainstorms, with elements of heavy rock and hip hop thrown in for good measure. But it's also their best to date thanks to the variety and ideas at work.

Review: The fourth album from Colombian-Spanish singer Kali Uchis translates as Without Fear (of Love and Other Demons)). It is her first record sung primarily in Spanish which does nothing at all to detract from the beauty of her delivery. Guests such as PartyNextDoor, Nasty and Cortez add their own flavours but the overriding vibe of this one is bright, melodic bedroom pop, r&b and reggaeton with funky breaks and trippy jazz stylings. Love is often in the air throughout the record which often soars to blue skies and brings the rays direct to your face.

Review: Rock dynamo Machine Gun Kelly has been busy of late. After a well received album in 2020 he is now back with another one, Mainstream Sellout, which is his sixth in all and is full of just as many big riffs. As always these are short put potent tunes and this is the second collaborative record he has made with drummer and producer Travis Barker. The record has plenty of pent up angst that fans old and new will feed off and plenty of entertainig lyrics.

Review: Following her acclaimed 2021 album, Star-Crossed, which topped Billboard's Top Albums Sales chart, Deeper Well now arrives from Kacy Musgroves. Prior to this, her groundbreaking 2018 album Golden Hour not only debuted at #1 on Billboard's Top Country Album chart but also earned her the Album of the Year at the Grammy, CMA, and ACM Awards. In 2023, Musgraves achieved her first #1 on the Hot 100 with 'I Remember Everything,' a duet with Zach Bryan, marking the first country duet in 40 years since Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' 'Islands in the Stream' in 1983. At the recent 66th Grammy Awards, the song won Best Country Song, solidifying Musgraves' unprecedented feat of winning in four major country categories.

Review: "A group of high school students struggle with drugs, love, social media and money as they come of age while trying to establish their identity," the top Google result for Euphoria tells us. Cut from a very familiar cloth, the teenage experience is arguably the most documented in television and film of any experience, save for love (often a tandem theme). Within those pantheons of on-screen entertainment, there are good, bad and awful outings, but almost all are consistently on-point when it comes to the score.

Whether you like Euphoria the show, then, is almost irrelevant. The soundtrack is typically strong stuff, running the gamut from retro rock drama by INXS, to tender alt-balladry nodding to acoustic Kate Bush by Lana Del Rey and the unnecessarily overbite-inducing pop-trap of Labrinth. A window into the time in which it was produced - today eras and genres have melted into a big mess of on-demand sound.

Review: Grossing over $1.4bn globally, Top Gun: Maverick may not have been the film everyone wanted last year, but it was the film everyone needed. Not least in the cinema. The long-long-awaited follow up to 1986's iconic (for good and bad reasons) tale of naval aviators (not pilots) singlehandedly saved the big screen summer in 2022, and that speaks volumes about where we are right now.

Film is a window on society, and in the aftermath of a pandemic during which we stepped over the line into the future unawares, it seems people really want an old school blockbuster void of cynicism. That's what they got here, and although it has both contemporary pop that won't stand the test of time, and bits from the original motion picture's soundtrack repeated, the score to the 21st Century reboot is perfectly in-keeping. Zimmer ramps up the emotional resonance with tunes like 'Penny Returns', Kenny Loggins does Kenny Loggins, and that theme tune rounds it off.