Music

Beyond litter and emissions: The environmental costs of loud sound at music festivals

The music festivals of the summer have packed up and moved on. Stages and sound systems have been dismantled, litter cleared, and land reseeded.

Why ‘No Bad Memories’ is my album of the year

I didn't expect how perfectly my personal happiness would fit an album so preoccupied with the sounds of old advertisements and obsolete electronics, filled with the relentless optimism of a world that believed the future could only get better. 

CUSP’s Dan Stock on the memories behind ‘English Country’

On Friday, CUSP, a Milton Keynes-based indie rock band, released their debut album, English...

The rise of the pop girlie: Marketing mediocrity or feminism in action?  

“GIRLS INVENTED PUNK ROCK, NOT ENGLAND”: so reads the iconic green T-shirt of Sonic Youth legend Kim Gordon. The slogan stands in defiance of an unfortunate truth in the music industry: femininity and credibility often exist in contention with one another.

The connoisseur’s guide to 2017 in music

Will Cowie looks ahead to what’s shaping up to be a year of unlikely pop music comebacks

Math rock for everyone

Dom Saad marries together maths and music in his exploration of the formidable arithmetic delights of the Oxford-based TTNG

‘Into the Fire’: how one song defined a decade of Grey’s Anatomy

Jeannie Stanley explores the implications of the Thirteen Senses hit for the critically acclaimed American drama

Review: Run the Jewels – RTJ3

Dom Saad is energised by the call for revolution dominating Run the Jewels' third studio release

George Michael: a tribute to the man of words

Natalia Bus remembers the lyrical genius of the late pop legend

The Oxford Alternotives’ Christmas release: a mingling of warmth and humour

Natalia Bus finds the Oxford Alternotives' Christmas cover both playful and heartfelt

‘Last Christmas’: a lingering recollection

Emma Leech gets lost in a musical memory

The ultimate soundtrack to your revision

Dom Saad recommends albums to sweat and slave to this Christmas vac

Live review: Biffy Clyro at London’s O2 arena

Romilly Mavin is impressed by Biffy Clyro’s mingling of energy and intimacy at the close of their UK tour

Live review: Fickle Friends at the Bullingdon

Akshay Bilolikar escapes rainy Oxford for sunny Los Angeles with Fickle Friends

OxFolk reviews: ‘Here We Go 1, 2, 3’

“Here we go, 1, 2, 3, hold your hands out to me…” so opens this beautifully formed album ‘Here We Go 1, 2, 3’...

OxFolk reviews: ‘Cold Old Fire’

There aren’t many folk groups that can claim to have originated in an ‘experimental psychedelic folk punk duo’, but then again Lynched, the self-styled...

Live review: Frank Turner at Oxford’s New Theatre

Sandy Elliot tries to rock out to Frank Turner & the Sleeping Souls in a venue not quite suited to rock 'n' roll antics

Top 10 songs of 2016

Dom Saad navigates a profusion of genres and artists in his picks of 2016

Review: D.I.D – The State We’re In

Natalia Bus feels the weight of D.I.D's long-awaited second album

OxFolk reviews: ‘a bit of blue’

There is something irresistibly lovable about Emily Maguire’s voice – it seems to swell silence the world around it, putting everything out of focus...

OxFolk reviews: Life in a Paper Boat

Ben Ray finds surprises in well-renowned folk musician Kate Rusby's new album Life in a Paper Boat

A pioneer erased: Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Alice Townson argues that the innovative rock and roll talent should be discussed as unique in her own right

OxFolk Reviews: ‘Vortex’

Ben Ray reviews Methera's new album 'Vortex', and is swept away by their live Corpus performance

Beyond anger: an evening with Frank Carter

Somehow we have got to a point where modern rock music feels as if it is becoming ever more sanitised and anodyne. The idea...

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