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Review: Boygenius is the collaborative project of Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and 'The Record' is their next album, scheduled for March 2023. Combining pristine indie pop gloss with melancholic lyrics and experimental production, highlights such as 'Emily, I'm Sorry' amount to paeans for the death of relationships and braving extreme weather for the sake of love. Masterful harmonies dart and glide across each production mix, cementing the bandmembers' vocal abilities.

Review: Being a 'supergroup' - as Boygenius trio Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus are commonly described - has its pitfalls, one of which is finding time to record and promote your music. It was for this reason that it took the threesome almost five years to record their debut album, The Record, which was released to critical acclaim (the NME called it an 'instant indie classic') earlier this year. The fact that 'The Rest', an EP of unheard songs (literally - no previews were available online prior to release), has followed so quickly suggests that it was recorded at the same time. Either way, it was produced by the band alongside a team of six producers) and delivers more memorable songs in their now familiar American indie-rock style. A treat for fans, all told.

Review: Effective communication relies on being succinct. Boygenius clearly know this given their track record for naming things. 2023 saw the trio - Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus - drop their debut album, The Record, and now, a few months down the line, we have The Rest: an EP made up of the other bits that didn't quite make said LP.

If you're completely new to the band, then let's start by saying these offcuts that didn't fit would put many a group to shame, which tells you just how good the full record is. Here, though, we have the lo-fi, dream-indie-pop crackle and fuzz of 'Black Hole', a track of huge emotional resonance, heartfelt, heartbroken yet hopeful semi-folk on 'Afraid of Heights', and the delicate, tender, and incredibly personal letting go balladry of 'Voyager', just for starters. Sublime confirmation Boygenius are your new favourite thing.

Review: There really is a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard. Not accessible to the public, it was allegedly originally built way back in the interwar period to provide easy access between an oil company's HQ and an amusement park. Such a grisly and suggestive origin myth is the epitome of Lana Del Rey's latest chart-topping album, which is named after the very same tunnel. Much like the underhanded links between the entertainment industry and dirty money alluded to in the title, Del Rey has mastered her sound here: an affective rumination on love, loneliness, and of course, loss, appealing to both ironic zoomers and nostalgia-trippers alike.

Review: Alongside De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory and Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Dr Dre's solo debut album, The Chronic, is one of the few hip-hop sets that genuinely changed the genre in the months and years after it was released. Three decades on from its original release, it has lost none of its allure - as this celebratory reissue proves. Built on distinctive 'G-funk' beats that heavily reference his hero, George Clinton, a wealth of killer samples, and raps from the cream of the then West Coast scene (his old pal Snoop Dogg is the most prominent voice throughout), it's a kaleidoscopic and sonically vibrant excursion that's every bit as essential now as it was back in 1993.

Review: Dr Dre dropped two such classics albums early on that he could have done nothing else since and still enjoyed the legendary status he does. Alongside 2011, The Chronic is one of West Coast hip-hop's more definite albums. It now turns a hard-to-believe 30 years old so gets this special anniversary reissue on Interscope across four sides of vinyl. It must be said that plenty of the misogynist lyrics have not at all aged well but the music itself remains fresh and full of story telling lyrics as well as iconic samples.

Review: Billie Eilish has been uncharacteristically secretive about her upcoming LP 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' despite the past whirlwind success of her career that has catapulted her into having heaps of Grammy awards - least of all the current reigning song of the year for the Barbie movie. In truth, all we know about this album is that it's her third, that (as with everything the singer has done) her brother and fellow artist FINNEAS is the executive producer and that the album has reportedly got ten tracks, no thanks in part to a leak by magazine Rolling Stone that drew the public ire of Eilish. Part of the rollout was Eillish's public condemnation of the out-of-control music industry practice of excessive vinyl variants, which has resulted in her offering eco-only discs - though of course she will be releasing multiple variants herself, her point still stands. It's a rare opportunity to get on board with an album without the raging industry tactics behind it, just an album dropped all at once on the day - as it should be, we'd venture.

Review: Billie Eilish's upcoming release Hit Me Hard And Soft promises to be her most audacious venture yet. Designed as a cohesive listening experience from start to finish - that'll be an album to anyone reading this over the age of 30 - it aims to take listeners on a rollercoaster journey, delivering a blend of hard-hitting and soft-touching lyrics and sounds that traverse various genres. Despite already boasting multiple Grammy Awards, Eilish continues to write with a fervour that suggests she's still out to prove herself. With Hit Me Hard And Soft, she and her long-time collaborator, brother Finneas, craft an expansive soundscape that delves deep into a spectrum of emotions.

Review: Around 2005 when the first edition of Curtain Call came out, we were reflecting on Eminem's meteoric ascendance to the premier league of hip-hop. Back then, all his beats were either produced by himself or with Dr. Dre, and there was a definitive arc to his sound. Moving on, there have been lengthy pauses, sideways swerves and surprise turns as Marshall Mathers follows his own path, and as such it's a fine time for a second greatest hits compilation to cast a glance back over some of the best Eminem joints of the past 17 years. There are plenty of dazzling guest spots from Beyonce and Rihanna to Snoop Dogg and Kehlani, but the best is when you can hear Em himself in full flow, doing what he does best.

Review: RECOMMENDED
The fact Imagine Dragons tangibly slowed things down in the past year or two has nothing to do with the deadly virus that single-handedly stopped life as we all knew it. The outfit had done four albums in six years, records arriving between non-stop touring schedules and each giving birth to a series of big hit singles. It's a story of runaway success, but those almost always lead to burnout.

With this in mind, Mercury: Act 1 is the band refocused, re-energised and musically reformed. Enlisting the services of super producer Rick Rubin, a guy known for switching things up in terms of an artist or band's style, he certainly lives up to those expectations here. Yes, it remains staunchly pop driven by tribal, fist pounding drums and choruses that should be sung in rainstorms, with elements of heavy rock and hip hop thrown in for good measure. But it's also their best to date thanks to the variety and ideas at work.

Review: Carly Rae Jepsen's latest album The Loveliest Time is said to be a loose companion and something of a thematic inversion of her record The Loneliest Time from last year. It is the third in a series of B-side albums that present her as a likeable everywoman who is self depreciating and always full of conviction. Returning collaborators include Rostam, Patrik Berger, John Hill, and Kyle Shearer, and musically the record is her most diverse to date with everything from IDM-adjacent sounds to French touch and beyond with looping vocal samples and plenty of unabashed emotion.

Review: The fourth album from Colombian-Spanish singer Kali Uchis translates as Without Fear (of Love and Other Demons)). It is her first record sung primarily in Spanish which does nothing at all to detract from the beauty of her delivery. Guests such as PartyNextDoor, Nasty and Cortez add their own flavours but the overriding vibe of this one is bright, melodic bedroom pop, r&b and reggaeton with funky breaks and trippy jazz stylings. Love is often in the air throughout the record which often soars to blue skies and brings the rays direct to your face.

Review: Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, the Compton-based rapper's first album since 2012's major label debut, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, has been receiving rave reviews. In truth, it's not hard to see why. Imaginative, soulful, and blessed with the looseness of live performance (a result of the use of jazz-minded live players as much as anything else), it sounds like the kind of album that may one day be hailed as a hip-hop classic. Sure, there are big name guests - Dre, Snoop, George Clinton and Thundercat included - but the focus remains on Lamar's distinctive flow and almost cinematic tales of life on L.A's streets. Given the quality of his lyrics, that's no bad thing.

Review: Rock dynamo Machine Gun Kelly has been busy of late. After a well received album in 2020 he is now back with another one, Mainstream Sellout, which is his sixth in all and is full of just as many big riffs. As always these are short put potent tunes and this is the second collaborative record he has made with drummer and producer Travis Barker. The record has plenty of pent up angst that fans old and new will feed off and plenty of entertainig lyrics.

Review: Following her acclaimed 2021 album, Star-Crossed, which topped Billboard's Top Albums Sales chart, Deeper Well now arrives from Kacy Musgroves. Prior to this, her groundbreaking 2018 album Golden Hour not only debuted at #1 on Billboard's Top Country Album chart but also earned her the Album of the Year at the Grammy, CMA, and ACM Awards. In 2023, Musgraves achieved her first #1 on the Hot 100 with 'I Remember Everything,' a duet with Zach Bryan, marking the first country duet in 40 years since Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' 'Islands in the Stream' in 1983. At the recent 66th Grammy Awards, the song won Best Country Song, solidifying Musgraves' unprecedented feat of winning in four major country categories.

Review: Led by recent single 'Yeern 101', Blue Lips marks Schoolboy Q's sixth studio album, a crowning achievement for a rapper now entering the for-the-ages establishing era of his career. Following up 2019's Crash Talk, it's been a good five years, with Q flexxing his ability to take his time; in the run-up, the rapper commented on this decision to move slowly but surely by clarifying that he does not view releasing music as a sport. Despite this claim, Q still flaunts a lavish lifestyle here, yet still manages to spare no sense of humility, chopping and changing between flows while appearing to critique said stereotyped lifestyle from the inside. Instrumentally, it's dark and tinged in a navy-dyed smoke, taking production risks (the slow muted soul of 'Blueslides' is as tender as Q has ever sounded) and stylistic meanders across Mustardy ratchet, dusty crate-dug flips, and even jungle (!) on 'Foux'.

Review: "A group of high school students struggle with drugs, love, social media and money as they come of age while trying to establish their identity," the top Google result for Euphoria tells us. Cut from a very familiar cloth, the teenage experience is arguably the most documented in television and film of any experience, save for love (often a tandem theme). Within those pantheons of on-screen entertainment, there are good, bad and awful outings, but almost all are consistently on-point when it comes to the score.

Whether you like Euphoria the show, then, is almost irrelevant. The soundtrack is typically strong stuff, running the gamut from retro rock drama by INXS, to tender alt-balladry nodding to acoustic Kate Bush by Lana Del Rey and the unnecessarily overbite-inducing pop-trap of Labrinth. A window into the time in which it was produced - today eras and genres have melted into a big mess of on-demand sound.

Review: The Mean Girls"soundtrack encapsulates the vibrant energy of the iconic teen comedy with a diverse array of tracks. From anthems like Renee Rapp's 'Meet The Plastics' to Auli'i Cravalho, Jaquel Spivey, Angourie Rice, Tim Meadows & Cast Of Mean Girls's 'Revenge Party', the album mirrors the film's mix of humour and heart. Renee Rapp & Megan Thee Stallion 'Not My Fault' is another standout that complements the film's narrative and overall, the soundtrack serves as a nostalgic trip back to the early 2000s, capturing the essence of Mean Girls and its cultural impact in a catchy and fun compilation.

Review: Grossing over $1.4bn globally, Top Gun: Maverick may not have been the film everyone wanted last year, but it was the film everyone needed. Not least in the cinema. The long-long-awaited follow up to 1986's iconic (for good and bad reasons) tale of naval aviators (not pilots) singlehandedly saved the big screen summer in 2022, and that speaks volumes about where we are right now.

Film is a window on society, and in the aftermath of a pandemic during which we stepped over the line into the future unawares, it seems people really want an old school blockbuster void of cynicism. That's what they got here, and although it has both contemporary pop that won't stand the test of time, and bits from the original motion picture's soundtrack repeated, the score to the 21st Century reboot is perfectly in-keeping. Zimmer ramps up the emotional resonance with tunes like 'Penny Returns', Kenny Loggins does Kenny Loggins, and that theme tune rounds it off.