Silent Words Speak Loudest

" It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day ", ventured Vincent van Gogh. So begins ...

I've written reams about the increasing (and sometimes prohibitive) cost of touring and the myriad reasons behind it, but it should also...

I didn't think anything could possibly paint a bleaker, more traumatising picture of nuclear apocalypse than Threads . But then I read W...

It was so grimly inevitable that Labour would respond to last Thursday's pounding at the polls not by returning chastened to the centre ...

Family holiday had already ruled out seeing Flaming Lips when they come to Cardiff in July - but if it hadn't, this interview with Steve...

If you want a comforting, easily comprehensible, linear narrative, Rose Of Nevada won't be for you. But, like director Mark Jenkin'...

Given the current state of everything, a new Broken Social Scene album that makes you feel like it's 2006 again is most welcome. Typical...

GANS / VOKA GENTLE, 6TH MAY 2026, CARDIFF CLWB IFOR BACH The title of Voka Gentle's latest album Domestic Bliss might imply contentment...

Kate Wasserberg's adaptation of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood debuted at Theatr Clwyd in Mold, but thankfully for those of us in So...

If you build it, they will come. Fiona Stewart may not have founded Green Man, but the festival’s managing director and owner can certainly ...

Why do publishers persist in not only selling hardback editions but doing so in advance of paperbacks? The answer seems obvious, even if it...

Marc Davenant's Rebellion! begins with a well-chosen quote from Oscar Wilde: " Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read hi...

Chris Steele Perkins' photobook The Troubles is remarkable at least in part for its chronicling of everyday life going on amid the bloo...

Are streaming services " minutes away from being obsolete "? When someone as close to the heart of the music industry as Jimmy Iov...

Ask someone to name a venue/club that was at the epicentre of New York's exciting punk and no wave scene of the late 1970s, and chances ...

If you're going to be transparent about your influences, then you can't go far wrong with the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and Su...

Bullying, bloodlust, brutality inflicted on the weak and the marginalised, toxic masculinity, the corrupting influence of power, civilisatio...

1. 'Hot Head' - Orcutt Shelley Miller Yow Take one avant-rock power trio composed of three outstanding musicians and throw professio...

One of the takeaways from Oasis manager Marcus Russell's guest lecture at Cardiff University last year was the band's loathing of s...

Jane's Addiction, Jesus Lizard, and now Sugar : incredible, enormously influential US alt-rock bands reforming and then choosing to tour...

What lies beneath? Inspired by Robert Macfarlane's book, Robert Petit's artfully filmed documentary Underland is an engrossing and i...

Let's face it: metal uberlords Melvins and Napalm Death teaming up to write and record a collaborative album was never likely to be a di...

The term " singer-songwriter " conjures up a few images in my head (mostly negative), but none of them correspond to Edwin R Steve...

I'll admit I was predisposed to look favourably on David Keenan's latest novel, Boyhood , from the moment I saw the cover image, tak...

Rarely can a band's profile have risen so rapidly as Angine De Poitrine's. The fact that that rise is entirely attributable to a sin...

Ah, mixtapes: the lost art of carefully curating a sequence of songs, whether to introduce the recipient to new musical delights, to show of...

Such is the lot of contemporary artists that many (most?) are forced into making their living by other means. However, while the scale of th...

As a huge fan of what both British Culture Archive and Craig Atkinson's Cafe Royal Books do, I was delighted to learn of the existence...

Branded a leftist " troublemaker " and subject to the unwelcome attentions of the House of Un-American Activities Committee, photo...

The reputation of Tasmin Stephens aka TTSSFU has been snowballing for a while, and last Thursday's gig at Clwb, with support from fellow...

It's no slight on the calibre of the company that Bill Ryder-Jones keeps, but the opportunity to see him perform solo in a church barely...

1. 'Staring At The Sun' - Straw Man Army In among the band's intriguing selection of (predominantly) jazz and electronica for th...

It often takes me a while to warm to a new album and stop comparing it unfavourably to what has gone before, but from first listen it was ab...

As their name would imply, The Twilight Sad have never been the cheeriest of bands, but It's The Long Goodbye is bleak even by their st...

Nearly a week on and I'm still smarting from the derby defeat. But at least some good came from the day, in the form of this stunning se...

Having thoroughly enjoyed Keith Cameron's mighty tome 168 Songs Of Hatred And Failure: A History Of Manic Street Preachers last year (y...

The fourth volume of Alan Bennett's diaries, Enough Said , is (not unsurprisingly) a delight - full of amusing observations on life, aci...

Like Mclusky , Bristol stoners The Heads have been away for two decades, during which time their reputation has only grown. Thankfully, new ...

Ben Benton's book  All You Can Eat is certainly not without its flaws and irritations, but I agree with his overall argument that ...

We'd got used to a long wait for new Mclusky material - nearly 20 years, in fact - but now Andrew Falkous and co have popped, it seems t...

With all the gloom surrounding grassroots gig venues these days, it was heartening to read the remarkable story of Minsthorpe High School in...

I alluded to it at the time , but I found the snapshot of August Sander's monumental photographic series  People Of The Twentieth Centur...

Three albums into a solo career that didn't begin in earnest until she was 66, alt rock icon Kim Gordon continues to astonish with a pro...

1. 'You Let My Tyres Down' - Tropical Fuck Storm I'll occasionally go a few weeks without watching this KEXP performance. More f...

If you were reading an article in a copy of NME in the 1990s, there's a good chance the accompanying images were taken by staff photogra...

Like many in Wales and indeed further afield, I've found myself seduced by the effervescence and exuberance of Melin Melyn's live pe...

Bands and artists inevitably hog the limelight when it comes to music coverage, but it's worth remembering they never exist in total iso...

I've written before about photographer Gordon Parks' celebrated series on segregation in the American South, but this Guardian arti...

If Fugazi were going to spring a major surprise, it was never going to be a comeback tour. But we've got the next best thing: a Bandcamp...

Artists and bands often like to talk about establishing a DIY culture, but rarely is it quite so evident as in the case of the Welsh reggae ...