Online Music Editor Stephen Ong reviews 18 hours of Radiohead demos.
Radiohead
Album Review: The 1975 – A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
Shortly after the release of The 1975’s second record in 2016, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful, yet so unaware of it, eclectic frontman Matty Healy described the group to MTV as being “the biggest band in the world that nobody’s ever heard of”. Two years on, perhaps only the first half […]
Thom Yorke, Mental Health & BBC 6 Music: An Interview with Zurich
Oxford is subtly nestled in Britain’s music scene, yet its homegrown acts include Radiohead, Foals and more recently, BBC Introducing act Zurich. I chatted to Chris and Adrian about the group’s influences, favourite fellow Oxford groups and how they added mental health into their song topics. I’ve read on your website that you describe your music as ‘widescreen […]
Songs with Soul – Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool and the Ends of Worlds
A Moon Shaped Pool starts at the end. All screeching strings and thudding drums, “Burn the Witch” is a burning forest, a cacophonous apocalypse whose conclusion climbs like fire ‘til it suddenly dies. The next song, “Daydreaming”, is its sonic opposite: soft, ethereal piano meanders among gently sinister vocals and strings, a ghost wandering the […]
In This Modern Land: An Interview with City Calm Down’s Jack Bourke
Melbourne four-piece City Calm Down are preparing to release their 2018 sophomore record, two years since their debut album launched them into the musical spotlight. Fronting a group whose sonic is refreshing in the current alternative scene yet has hints of Joy Division, The National and New Order, Jack Bourke took a break from the […]
Paranoid Fan-Droid: Why I Stan Radiohead
Radiohead, Radiohead, Radiohead. Where to begin? Formed in 1985 in Oxfordshire, the band have been a cultural mainstay since their 1992 grunge anthem, ‘Creep’. With a career spanning nine Grammy-winning albums, three headlining Glastonbury performances, and no less than six ground-breaking commercial, cinematic and technological innovations in the music industry, they’re easily one of the […]
Retrospective: Radiohead – In Rainbows
My first proper introduction to In Rainbows and in fact Radiohead was, as disappointingly as I care to admit, whilst watching the first instalment to the disaster that people now refer to as ‘Twishite’. My eleven year old self could barely contain herself watching Twilight, and shockingly this wasn’t due to Robert Pattinson’s constipated face […]
Album Review: The National – Sleep Well Beast
‘America’s Radiohead’ The National have brought forth their latest album Sleep Well Beast, meaning like many other delightful things such as Wonders of the World and the Harry Potter novels, their album discography now totals a glorious collection of seven. Frontman Matt Berninger, whose deep, baritone vocals at times parallel Ian Curtis and Ricky Wilson, […]
Glastonbury, ABBA and the Politically Engaged Youth: An Interview with Declan McKenna
The night before I meet Declan McKenna, I am flicking through the music channels on television and spot ‘Wish You Were at Glasto’ on MTV Rocks, a programme of various music videos from artists scheduled to appear at 2017’s Worthy Farm iconic festival. Among tracks from the likes of Radiohead, London Grammar and Kaiser Chiefs, […]
The Best Music Videos of 2016
Radiohead – Burn the Witch Ahead of their fantastic album A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead released easily the most distinctive music video of the year. It is entirely in stop-motion animation, in a similar style to old children’s television shows such as Trumpton. However, this innocent-seeming setting clashes with a dark plot: an inspector being […]