Albums: Blossoms Songs From The Wedding Cake
Tom Ogden’s songwriting has become noticeably more personal, drawing heavily on marriage, relationships and the small details that make up a shared life. Yet there is nothing overly grand about the subject matter. Instead, Blossoms find their material in arguments, car journeys, television nights and domestic routines, turning the stuff of everyday existence into bright, melodic indie-pop.
Albums: Ella Hooper Overnight Success
.jpg)
Killing Heidi was only the beginning. Hooper subsequently explored a folkier side with The Verses alongside Jesse, before embarking on a solo career that has seen her continually experiment with an array of genres and sonic landscapes. Overnight Success, her fourth solo album, finds her drawing all of those experiences together and planting herself firmly in the Americana and country sphere.
Albums: Vonda Shepard Nine Songs
There has never been any sense of Vonda Shepard rushing to put out a record simply for the sake of having something new to say. Instead, she has always seemed more interested in maintaining the remarkable bond she has built with her live audience, whilst allowing herself the time and space to follow her own creative process. New music arrives when it is ready — and, on Nine Songs, that patience has once again paid off.
When Historians Start Prating
There is a particular style of historical writing and lecturing which irritates me disproportionately. It is not history itself that bothers me; on the contrary, I find the attempt to understand the past endlessly fascinating, which is why I watch a good deal of historical “documentaries” and avidly read both historical nonfiction and fiction.
Albums: Echo & The Bunnymen – Apples For Isaac
Apples for Isaac isn't trying to be their classic album Ocean Rain again. Nor should it. Those records belong to another time. What matters here is that Echo & the Bunnymen have found a way to acknowledge their history without allowing it to dictate their future.
Classical Music: Requiem Da Camera, For St Cecilia & In Terra Pax
The disc is the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge's thirtieth for Hyperion, and the first since Steven Grahl took up the baton as director of music. Any anxiety that the choir's famously burnished sound might falter in the changeover can be laid to rest within a few bars. If anything, it has acquired a fresh bloom. Tone, diction, soloists, accompaniment and Hyperion's characteristically sumptuous engineering are first-class from every angle, and the whole has the feeling of a choir singing music it loves.
Review: Peas On Your Knees - A Life In The Poems Of Michael Rosen
To read Michael Rosen’s poems out loud is to hear an echo. For to give voice to a random selection of his most performable verses is to be accompanied by Rosen himself, declaiming at one’s shoulder, but with infinitely greater skill and idiosyncratic grace.
Classical Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams From Ursula, With Love
The story behind it is as touching as the music. Ursula Vaughan Williams kept these recordings, and in 1996 she passed them to Stephen Connock, at that time chairman of the RVW Society, so that it could eventually release them. Of the seventeen tracks, fourteen are getting their first commercial release, while the remaining three appear to have been taken from a BBC transmission. Hence the title: From Ursula, with Love.
Albums: Europe- Come This Madness
Nine years is a long time between albums, even for a band with more than four decades of history behind them. But Europe returns from that lengthy silence, sounding less like a group resting on its reputation and more like one with something left to prove.
Classical Music: Franck Quintet Enescu Octet
Two decades separate the works on this disc, yet César Franck's Piano Quintet and George Enescu's Octet make natural companions. Both push chamber music to the edge of the symphonic, both build vast structures from a handful of recurring ideas, and both demand players who can sustain intensity over long spans. Recorded at Nordstrom Recital Hall in Seattle and produced by Simon Kiln, the album features violinist James Ehnes, artistic director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society, at the head of a hand-picked ensemble of colleagues.
Classical Music: Granville Bantock Orchestral Works
.jpg)
Rumon Gamba and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra are on top form, attentive to every nuance and playing with real elegance. Every section excels, the tutti passages are well controlled, and the lower strings and percussion add richness to the sound. Chandos provides a warm, detailed recording. Bantock's parents had other plans for him, and English music is richer for their disappointment.
The Perfect Schools Out Theatre Production
A play for family audiences based on a classic story by Oscar Wilde comes to Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre this October half-term. The Selfish Giant (26 and 27 October) invites audiences to step into the magical world of the Giant’s garden. It’s full of music, beauty, birdsong and stories. But the Giant is cross to find children – children!
Sugababes announce March 2027 UK Tour!
Sugababes have announced a run of major UK live shows for March, bringing their celebrated catalogue and new music to fans in Birmingham, Glasgow, London and Manchester.
Ilkley Literature Festival Opens With A Strong Yorkshire Accent
.jpg)
The north's longest-running literary festival opens its doors today, and a third of this year's line-up is from Yorkshire, lives here or has close ties to the county. Group Editor Andrew Palmer picks out some of the highlights. Ilkley Literature Festival 2026 begins today, bringing more than a fortnight of talks, readings and discussions to the Wharfedale town.
Reading between the class lines
A new edition of The Bee argues that Britain's reading crisis looks rather different once you know where to look. Britain, we are told, has stopped reading.
Tutti Frutti Brings Heartwarming Story By Award-Winning Writer To The Stage
Tutti Frutti is taking Red Robin’s Winter Song, a brand-new children’s play by award-winning author and playwright Manjeet Mann, on tour this autumn. The Leeds-based children’s theatre company is producing this joy-filled winter story for young children and their families.
Why Growing Older Is Something To Be Embraced
The screen icon Ingrid Bergman once wrote: “Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!” It’s perhaps easy, though, in today’s digital-obsessed world that so often appears to value youth over experience, for older generations to feel like they’re heading for the scrapheap.
A Tour De Force – Charlie Connelly’s attention All Shipping reaches Scarborough
He ambles onto the stage looking rather like a middle-aged 1950s’ bank clerk who has wandered off on holiday in search of a deckchair. Instead, he finds a comfortable chair, an old Bush radio set - and an audience. What follows is almost two hours of storytelling, and in the hands of Charlie Connelly it becomes a veritable tour de force.
Will Young celebrates 25 years of Evergreen with tour announcement
One of Britain’s most-beloved soul pop voices, the multi-award winning artist Will Young, has announced The Evergreen 25th Anniversary Tour – a celebratory 16-date tour across the UK with his full band, performing all the hits across his two-decade-plus journey in music. The tour kicks off in February 2027, coinciding with 25 years since Will’s landmark Pop Idol win.
Hits Radio Live 2026 at Manchester’s Co-op Live is SOLD OUT!
Hits Radio has today announced the huge line-up for a sold-out Hits Radio Live 2026, returning to Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena on Saturday November 21st. Fleur East, Will Best and James Barr revealed live on air this morning [Monday 28th September that tickets have officially sold out! Now the only way to secure a spot at this epic event is to win!
Poets In The Limelight As Ripon Celebrates National Poetry Day
Poets will take centre stage in Ripon on Thursday (October 1st) as the city marks National Poetry Day with performances at three prime locations. Between 11am and 12noon, the Workhouse Museum on Allhallowgate will be the venue for verse and associated activities. This will be followed between 2pm and 4pm with poetry readings in the inspiring surrounds of Ripon Cathedral.
Bob Davenport : From Gateshead To Newport
Bob Davenport, the powerful Gateshead-born singer who became one of the defining voices of the British folk revival, has died aged 94. For more than six decades, Davenport was an uncompromising champion of traditional song, bringing the music of the North East and the wider British folk tradition to audiences at home and abroad.
Dum-Di-dum-di-dum-di-dum… Ambridge Comes To Harrogate
Group Editor Andrew Palmer surrenders an afternoon to Ambridge and emerges knowing far too much about yoghurt. Spoiler alert: this was a fabulous Sunday afternoon spent in the company of the people we are all, frankly, obsessed with.
Deja Vu: “We’re Peak Living Right Now”
.jpg)
Deja Vu are feeling very much on top of the world. The British-Venezuelan girl group – Elle Botterill, Carolina Diaz and Tyrece Lewis – admit that their current run of success feels surreal, particularly as they are touring alongside one of their biggest influences, the Pussycat Dolls. “We just can’t believe what’s actually going on. It’s insane,” they say. “It’s surreal, definitely.
Albums: Anthrax - Cursum Perficio
T.O.M.B. and Watch It Go subsequently restore some of the album’s muscular momentum before My Victory brings proceedings to a suitably emphatic close.
Definitely worth the ten year wait.
Classical Music: Bruch Violin Concerto No 1
Few violin concertos have been recorded as often as Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor, Op 26. It is a perennial favourite and has more than once topped Classic FM's Hall of Fame, so any new recording has plenty of competition. The Norwegian violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing's version on Sony Classical, with the Oslo Philharmonic under Gergely Madaras, earns its place.
Classical Music: Neeme Järvi Conducts Shostakovich
.jpg)
Few composers carry as many contradictions as Dmitri Shostakovich. He could write music of crushing weight and bleak introspection, then turn out a ballet number or a popular song arrangement with a wink and a flourish. Any collection that aims to present him whole has to do justice to both sides. Chandos's eight-CD reissue of Neeme Järvi's recordings with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra does exactly that, and it makes an excellent introduction to the composer for newcomers as well as a rewarding return for those who already know him.
Classical Music: Kin
There is so much to enjoy here. Above all, Betts-Dean draws out the story in every song, just as folk music should. Picture a group of friends gathered round while one of them spins a tale, and you have the spirit of this disc. It is all achieved through a keen ear for tempo and a finely judged use of dynamics, never through over-egging.
Film Review: Resident Evil (2026)
You could make a fair argument that Zach Cregger is a bit of a household name in horror right now, having delivered two of the most talked about horror films in recent memory, and in the space of only five years.
A Tale Of Death And Life: The Mourning Necklace By Kate Foster
What must it feel like to be hanged, only to wake up four hours later, in your own coffin, and to climb out and walk into your own wake? Ask Maggie Dickson, because in Chapter One of The Mourning Necklace that is precisely what happens to her. The year is 1724 and the place, Edinburgh. Will the honest men of law decide to give her a reprieve or will they choose to hang her again?