Tag Archives: review

2025 in Darren’s music blog – the ten most popular posts of the year

Folk music, Glam rock, Interviews, Live reviews, Rock music, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Happy New Year to all my readers and my sincere thanks to everyone who has visited Darren’s music blog during 2025. As well as 65 posts covering an eclectic musical mix of folk, prog, glam, heavy metal, punk, hard rock and britpop, I also managed to get my fourth book completed (Steeleye Span On Track 1970-89) which was published by Sonicbond this Summer.

To recap on the year, here are the top ten most viewed posts of 2025. Here’s to 2026! 

1. Interview with Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg

Ahead of Fairport Convention’s Winter Tour back in January, I caught up with Dave Pegg. We discuss the making of the Full House album, the crucial role that Jethro Tull played in Fairport’s resurrection, changes taking place at Cropredy this summer so that the festival remains financially viable and the forthcoming tour.

Read full interview here

2. Live review: Santana at the O2, London 21/6/25

There are not many world-class rock acts still performing that remain to be ticked off on my own personal bucket-list but Santana definitely fitted into that category and prompted the first of two trips to the O2 this Summer. From the off it’s very much a give-the-audience-exactly-what-they-want greatest hits set, interspersed with nuggets of Woodstock-era exhortations in favour of love and peace and togetherness. “I’m a hippy!” explains Carlos Santana.

Read full review here

3. Live review: Alice Cooper and Judas Priest at the O2, London 25/7/25

Kicking off with ‘Lock Me Up’, Alice Cooper’s set is as over-the-top and theatrical as ever. An exhilarating combination of blistering hard rock, glam-meets-horror showmanship and that unmistakeable, menacing vocal drawl, the hits come thick and fast.

Coming on stage to the strains of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’, Judas Priest launched straight into ‘All Guns Blazing’ from the Painkiller album. Released 35 years ago, songs from that much-celebrated album feature heavily in tonight’s set.

Read full review here

4. Live review: Uriah Heep / April Wine / Tyketto at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill 27/2/25

I was still a pre-schooler when Uriah Heep released their debut album in 1970, although this year does mark 40 years since I first saw the band at Manchester Apollo back in 1985. Tonight’s performance proves beyond doubt that my enthusiasm for the band remains undimmed. I’m relieved to hear this is not quite the finale just yet.

Read full review here

5. Live review: Fairport Convention at Union Chapel, London 22/2/25

It’s now 40 years since Sanders played on his first Fairport album – Gladys’ Leap. Ric Sanders tells the audience that he was phoned up by Dave Pegg who had asked him if he was interested in contributing fiddle to three tracks but initially he had no idea he was being asked to contribute to a Fairport Convention album.

Read full review here

6. Interview with Fairport Convention’s Ric Sanders

Ahead of this year’s Cropredy festival, I catch up with Fairport Convention’s Ric Sanders. We talk about first learning to play the violin at primary school, about getting his big break with Soft Machine and the invitation to play on Fairport’s Gladys’ Leap album forty years ago this year – and, of course, this year’s Cropredy line-up.

Read full interview here

7. Live review: Supergrass at the Roundhouse, London 21/5/25

Given I spent the battle of Britpop firmly in the Blur camp, I passed up on the chance to buy tickets for the Oasis reunion when it was announced last summer. A couple of weeks later, however, when Supergrass announced that they would also be reforming to celebrate the 30th anniversary of I Should Co-Co, I was in the online queue as soon as tickets went on sale. Always my favourite band of the Britpop era, a chance to hear Supergrass’s debut album performed in full promised to be something rather special.

Read full review here

8. Live review: Sweet at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire 5/4/25

In the months and years to come, who knows how many more Sweet gigs there’ll be. Andy Scott shows every sign of wanting to continue for as long as he is physically able to walk on stage, pick up his guitar and perform. I hope there’ll be plenty more nights like this for the band and I hope I get to see a few more of them myself but I savoured every precious moment of this concert as if it were my last.

Read full review here

9. Live review: X Generation X at the Brunswick, Hove 9/11/25

Making light of the seeming incongruity of launching a UK tour on a Sunday, Westwood asked the happy but clearly refreshed crowd at one point if they all had to be up in the morning. “No!!” the crowd yelled back in unison. “They’re all retired!” quipped Steve Norman. That’s as maybe but for 75 glorious minutes it was 1976 all over again and here in this sweaty cellar bar the spirit of punk was recaptured in all of its incendiary glory.

Read full review here

10. Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2025

There was a heavy Fairport bias to this year’s list, with interviews and live reviews bagging four of the top ten most popular slots. Just making it into the Top Ten is my review of this year’s Cropredy Festival which featured a guest appearance from none other than Robert Plant.

Read full review here

2024 in Darren’s music blog

2023 in Darren’s music blog

2022 in Darren’s music blog

2021 in Darren’s music blog

2020 in Darren’s music blog

2019 in Darren’s music blog

This week’s featured artist: Luke Jackson – new EP ‘Of The Time’ out now

Album reviews, Folk music, Music news, , , , , , ,

Canterbury-based singer-songwriter Luke Jackson has scooped up numerous awards since first being nominated for the BBC’s Young Folk Awards back in 2013.

As a folk and roots-based artist he’s tapped into a school of song-writing that goes back many generations yet his songs always seem so effortlessly contemporary, topical and relevant.

This latest seven-track EP ‘Of The Time’ is no exception. Written during lockdown these songs take us on a powerful journey, not only of Luke Jackson’s own thoughts at various times over the months between March and November 2020, but feelings that many, many of us will immediately empathise with:

“The man in charge looks troubled on the TV. Doesn’t have a single thing to say” he sings on opening track ‘I Am Not Okay With This’.

The subjects are often bleak but the songs are never bleak, testimony to Jackson’s power as a songwriter and warmth as a performer. And he can be passionate and outspoken and uncompromising but avoids that temptation to get ranty – a trap that some singer-songwriters dealing with contemporary subject matter can sometimes fall into. Again, it’s a mark of his gift as a songwriter and the pure poetry of his lyrics.

The production nicely captures that mood, too.

“The songs lend themselves to a more sparse, acoustic production so the obvious person to do these recordings with was Elliott Norris at his ‘Good Neighbour Records’ studio,” he tells us.

I first saw Luke Jackson at Cecil Sharp House five years ago and was hugely impressed. His ‘This Family Tree’ album that I picked up that evening has frequently been on my stereo ever since – but it has been a treat to get fully up to date with Luke Jackson’s more recent output and familiarise myself with his wonderful 2019 album ‘Journals’ as well as this year’s brand new EP. As soon as I heard it I had no hesitation in making him this week’s featured artist.

Released: 29th January 2021

Available for download via http://lukepauljackson.com/shop/

Related review:

Luke Jackson and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar at Cecil Sharp House 2016

Review: ‘EP #3’ the latest release from Polish prog rockers Karrakan

Album reviews, Rock music, , , , ,

Karrakan are a progressive rock outfit who come from a small town called Ostrołęka in the North-East of Poland. The band recorded their first EP in 2016, more a basic hard rock approach that incorporate blues scales and heavy metal riffs. However, the addition of a saxophone into the mix even back then signalled a likely future direction into more proggy territory.

Their second release EP #2, released in 2019 continued down such a path with more complex compositions and more evident prog approach.

Karrakan are now onto their third release, the imaginatively-titled EP #3 – no-one can accuse these guys of lacking consistency when it comes to nomenclature!

“EP #3 contains ‘only’ 3 songs,” say the band, “but they are loaded with variety of musical assets. Thick distorted guitars, odd rhythmic divisions, vocal harmonies, acoustic interludes and… saxophone, which works surprisingly well with all the heavy sound.”

Incorporating blues, jazz, classical and metal influences the band are developing something of a unique approach: tastefully-executed guitar solos and that infamous saxophone interplay with some much harder-edged riffing and there’s also sprinklings of more gentle, folky acoustic guitar here and there, too.

The first track ‘The Shape of Infinity’ incorporates growled pseudo death metal vocals which I’m not convinced entirely work, while the final track ‘Allocation of Beauty’ has a far more conventional melodic rock-style vocal which is considerably better suited to the nature of the material in my view. The middle track ‘Panto Dance’ meanwhile is entirely instrumental and the most obviously proggy composition on the three-track EP.

Karrakan are:

Piotr Sierzputowski – guitar/vocals

Jan Sierzputowski – saxophone

Domink Górski – drums

Kamil Badeja – bass

As well as promoting this current EP the band are also busy writing material for their debut full-length album. It will be interesting to watch how Karrakan develop and I wish the guys luck.

https://www.facebook.com/Karrakan.ostroleka/

Folk: EP review – The Tweed Project ‘The Tweed Project’

Album reviews, Folk music, , , , , , ,

This review was originally published by Bright Young Folk here

The Tweed Project was originally formed in 2015, aiming to both celebrate and fuse English and Scottish traditional music. After a few years on the back-burner The Tweed Project is now back, performing a short tour last autumn and releasing this EP. With a new line-up, Greg Russell and Ciaran Algar are joined by vocalist Josie Duncan, guitarist Pablo Lafuente, piper and whistle player Ali Levack and percussionist Evan Carson.

Josie Duncan sings beautifully, whether it’s in English on songs like Dick Gaughan’s ‘Both Sides the Tweed’ whose message of friendship flourishing on both sides of the famous river straddling the English and Scottish borders is something of a musical manifesto for the band; or in Gaelic as on the wonderfully frenetic ‘B’fhearr leam fhin’. There is some splendid playing on the release, too, as one would expect from an EP packed full of past Young Folk Award winners. The combination of pipes, fiddle, guitar and percussion makes for some wonderfully atmospheric moods created throughout the EP’s six tracks.

For admirers of Greg Russell’s superb singing voice he makes just one lead vocal contribution, singing on the final track ‘Turn That Page Again’. A song about hope and optimism for the future, it concludes the EP in style.

With a refreshed and revitalised line-up and a release just brimming with virtuoso musicality, love and passion it is wonderful to experience the creativity of the Tweed Project flowing once more.

Released: Haystack Records 18th October 2019

https://thetweedprojectband.com/

The-TWeed-Project-EP

Related reviews:

Album review – Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar ‘Utopia and Wasteland’
Luke Jackson and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar at Cecil Sharp House 2016
Greg Russell and Rex Preston at The Green Note 2015
Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar at The Green Note 2014

Review: ‘Rebel Sounds’ exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, London

Music culture & history, Music news, Rock music, , , ,

Walking into an exhibition and hearing ‘Teenage Kicks’ blasting out at full volume as you step through the door is probably not the typical visitor experience at the Imperial War Museum – but my trip coincided with the museum’s ‘Culture Under Attack’ programme. With a free day in the capital and browsing possible exhibitions I might take a look at I happened across the IWM’s ‘Rebel Sounds’ – one of three concurrent exhibitions that form the Culture Under Attack season.

The exhibition is intended to illustrate how music can be a force for resistance and rebellion – even under the most desperate of circumstances. From undercover jazz nights in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, to the burgeoning cross-community punk scene in Northern Ireland in the late 1970s, to Serbia’s underground B92 radio station challenging the violent nationalism of the  Milošević regime in the 1990s, to the artists making a defiant cultural challenge to Islamist extremism and its ban on music in modern-day Mali – the exhibition is testimony to the power of music to lead us out of darkness.

The exhibition is not a particularly large one and it focuses solely on the four snapshots in time and place listed above. However, while I’ve seen far more extensive music exhibitions with a far bigger range of exhibits, few have left me feeling as moved as this one. A wonderful celebration of the beauty and determination of the human spirit, even in the grimmest of times, this exhibition is well worth a visit. What’s more it’s completely free of charge, as is access to the other two exhibitions in the series – one looking at how British museums and galleries protected works of art from destruction in the Second World War and the other examining the destruction of cultural heritage during times of conflict, whether a deliberate strategy or collateral damage. And, of course, if you still have time to spare after that there’s all the usual tanks and medals and wot-not to see.

Rebel Sounds – part of the Culture Under Attack programme runs until 5th January 2020. Entrance: Free

https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/rebel-sounds?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIk6ayrZCw5QIVB7LtCh0IVQK1EAAYASAAEgJARfD_BwE

20191022_114255

 

Folk-rock: DVD review – Merry Hell ‘A Year In The Life of Merry Hell’

Album reviews, Folk music, Music culture & history, Rock music, , , , ,

Evolving out of an ad-hoc reunion of 90s folk-punk band, the Tansads, Wigan-based folk rockers, Merry Hell, have been making a decisive impact on the UK’s folk and festival scene over the past nine years. With several albums under their belt they now come at us with a DVD. Titled ‘A Year In The Life of Merry Hell’ it’s a documentary that follows the band between February 2018 and February 2019 – and when we say documentary it is very much a carefully-crafted film worthy of the name rather than a video of concert footage with a few dressing room interviews tacked on to the end.

Made by the band themselves and produced, directed, filmed and edited by Merry Hell fiddle player, Neil McCartney, it’s a fascinating insight into this tightly-knit band of close family members and long-term friends.

We see the band on the road – at festivals and backstage at various venues – but we also see individual members at home, in pubs or visiting some of their favourite places. We get to hear about musical influences (punk, Susan Vega, Nick Drake and hymn melodies…) but we also get to hear about literary influences, too. Orwell looms large, and not just for Wigan Pier, either.

Engaging, funny, moving, and highly personal, as band documentaries go ‘A Year In The Life of Merry Hell’ stands head and shoulders above many films about far, far more famous musicians. In fact, I’d go so far as saying that even if you’d never heard of Merry Hell and you had zero interest in folk rock, this documentary would still be compulsive viewing for the warm and very human portrayal of its subject matter.

Released: September 2019 

http://www.merryhell.co.uk/

documentary-cover

Related reviews:

Album review: Merry Hell ‘Anthems To The Wind’

EP review: Merry Hell ‘Bury Me Naked’

EP review: Merry Hell ‘Come On England!’