Silent Words Speak Loudest

Few musicians can have had as unlikely career trajectories as Daniel Blumberg: from member of indie also-rans Cajun Dance Party and Yuck whi...

When Alan Sparhawk played in Cardiff last November , I particularly sang the praises of some of the " as-yet-unrecorded material "...

There are many reasons to love Los Campesinos!, and one of them is their refreshing transparency about the realities of being in a band. Tak...

For anyone wondering how Geoff Barrow was going to keep himself busy after quitting Beak>, here's your answer: by following in Warp...

Martin Parr is a polarising figure - but love him or loathe him, I don't think you can deny that our highest-profile documentary photogr...

The righteous force of nature that is Andrew Falkous of Mclusky and Future Of The Left is of the opinion that no band should have more than ...

Very welcome news from Northumberland:  Mik Critchlow's work is to be held at the Woodhorn Museum . Over the course of more than four de...

For publishers, explicitly drawing parallels with a runaway bestseller in the blurb for your latest novel is a calculated risk. On the one h...

There's no doubting - for me, at least - the quality of Panda Bear's new album Sinister Grift . What remains a concern, however, is ...

Crude and uncharitable though it may be to say it, but, as was the case with their previous outings, The Murder Capital's latest album B...

You've heard of Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos (or at least you should have) - but what about " Timothy Leary's psychedeli...

Simon & Schuster's decision to no longer require authors to get blurbs for their books has stimulated quite a bit of debate, and I ...

End Of The Middle is a special album , no doubt - but it's far from the first time that Rich(ard) Dawson has released a dazzling record...

Jay Rayner decided to dedicate his final Observer Food Monthly column to the key points of the previous 180 - and it's hard to disagre...

What makes for a good album review? One that, when you listen to the record in question, has you excitedly and repeatedly exclaiming of the ...

Admittedly, a Clwb triple bill headlined by noiserock supergroup The None and also featuring locals Obey Cobra and Beauty Parlour didn't...

As a reviewer required to digest, rate and file copy on albums weeks and sometimes months in advance, it can be slightly daunting to have to...

Sadly, life being what it is, gone are the days of being able to binge watch major boxsets (I genuinely don't know how we found the time...

It's too blunt to claim that the camera never lies - perspective can be deceptive, after all - but Nate Gowdy's eyewitness images of...

Jay Rayner, once critical of Cardiff's food scene, has in recent years understandably updated his opinion  - and his verdict isn't t...

In many ways, I wish I'd read If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things , Jon McGregor's debut novel, before Reservoir 13 , the book tha...

Did everything really go to shit as soon as Fugazi went on indefinite hiatus in 2003? As my wife - a scientist - is fond of saying, it seems...

A Real Pain is one of those films where not a great deal happens, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it's about, but it stays w...

On Friday, Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite delightedly posted on Bluesky that his band's new album The Bad Fire had reached " #5 U...

I'm still a Manics fan and want to like their albums, I really do. So it doesn't give me any pleasure to report that their latest, C...

When, towards the end of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad , one of the characters refers to ...

It feels like an absolute age since my first exposure to the new Mogwai album, such are the requirements of reviewing deadlines and winter b...

I first came across David Wrench in his role as one half of the wonderfully weird pop duo Audiobooks, but it turns out that the man who look...

Two months since it suddenly shut down , Cardiff venue the Moon is back - well, sort of. It's been rebranded as the New Moon , complete ...

First and foremost, it's worth stating that I'm not really a member of Nosferatu 's core demographic, so the fact I found it ver...

Last month I heard David Hurn talk about his then fresh-off-the-press photobook On Reading , a tribute to his hero Andre Kertesz. The Guardi...

If there's one thing that turned me off checking out Romance , the latest album by Fontaines DC - a band whose previous output I've ...

Little wonder that Sam Dabb of Le Pub was so bullish in her comments to NME recently, claiming that Newport was " heading into another ...

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Michael Sheen has once again confirmed his status - in general, but especially in these parts - as an all-r...

If you were a press photographer working in Palermo in the 1970s and 1980s, then it was an inevitability that you'd end up covering a lo...

When Alex Deller interviewed David Yow and Duane Denison of The Jesus Lizard about last year's comeback album Rack , one of the details ...

Let's start the new year (belatedly) with a bit of positivity:  this NME article about " Newport's resurgent music scene "...

End-of-year-list season always brings welcome nudges/reminders to check out albums that have, for one reason or another, passed me by. And s...

As previously mentioned , Ansh have very sadly now closed their doors. The (potentially) good news for burger fans in our corner of Cardiff ...

It seems like a great idea: celebrating a diverse plethora of grassroots music venues, to counterbalance all of the doom-and-gloom reporting...

It is - as advertised - a long read, but Mark Blacklock's Guardian piece on the Samuel Smith Old Brewery pub empire  really is as good a...

To mark the tenth anniversary of the opening of the fantastic and feisty Workers in Ynyshir, Shaun Thomas of Bylines Cymru spoke to Gayle R...

I love a good photobook, so the opportunity to hear the stories behind two of them - David Hurn's brand new  On Reading  and Robert Gree...

These days, the festival season starts as soon as the festive season has ended, with Rockaway Beach the first bash in the calendar before th...

We're deep in end-of-year-list season, and many of them look quite similar - so here's an alternative, courtesy of contributors to B...

Photography features heavily - pleasingly if not entirely surprisingly so - in the National Museum Cardiff's superb current exhibition T...

To mark the opening of Tate Britain's exhibition The 80s: Photographing Britain , Zoe Whitfield of Dazed spoke to seven of the featured ...

Like many music fans of my generation, I was turned on to the MC5 by At The Drive-In, or at least journalists writing about At The Drive-In ...

South Walian fans of crushingly dull music rejoice: Kings Of Leon are coming to Cardiff next summer. But what's got me and many others m...

Another Friday, another closure of a beloved music institution, and one close to my own heart. Last week, it was the Moon here in Cardiff ; ...