Music Reviews

Albums, singles and live performances analysed beyond the hype. We explore artistry, authorship and the systems influencing what gets heard.

  • Our Rating: 7/10 Bea Elmy Martin’s “Anouk” lands as a deeply personal study of friendship, but what gives it weight is how deliberately it has been allowed to evolve. Written about a close friend and shaped over time, the track holds that tension between distance and connection that comes with real-life relationships, especially when lives…

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  • Our Rating: 10/10 From the opening line, “Take a look at the world today; we have got to find a better way,” this track lands exactly where it needs to. It is as emotional as it is liberating. And when that line keeps coming back, it doesn’t feel repetitive; it feels absolutely necessary. Because we…

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  • Our Rating 8/10 Some songs arrive loudly. Others move quietly, like someone stepping into a room and simply standing there until everyone notices. “Grace”, the new single from Irish alt-pop artist Chubby Cat, belongs firmly in the second category. Built around a sparse electronic foundation, the track leans into atmosphere rather than immediacy. Soft synth…

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  • Our Rating 7/10 Bright, unapologetic and built for movement, Well, Damn!, the new EP from London-based artist The New Citizen Kane, arrives like a burst of colour just as we exit the winter months. Leaning confidently into glossy electronic pop and disco textures, the release pairs shimmering synth lines with the emotional storytelling that has…

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  • Our Rating 10/10 Music has long been described as a healing force. Not the clinical sort found in a pharmacy, but the quieter medicine that settles somewhere deep in the chest when the right song arrives at the right moment. When I pressed play on “Golden Thing,” the new single from West Cork songwriter Molly…

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  • At a certain point in life, time stops feeling abstract. It becomes physical. It lives in the body, in memory, in the quiet realisation that the person you once were is not the person you are becoming. For Ndidi O, that realisation sits at the centre of her new album It’s About Time, released March…

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  • Thursday rolls around again and our new ritual of Tracks of the Week begins here at TIR. New and indeed great music never really stops arriving. It seeps out of studios, bedrooms, basements and tour buses like groundwater. The job is simply to listen closely and separate the sparks from the noise. Here are four…

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  • Our Rating 6/10 When BLACKPINK release music, it is never just a drop. It is a recalibration of global pop temperature. Deadline arrives after a period where each member expanded her individual identity. That matters. You can feel it in the control here. This EP is not chaotic spectacle. It is sharpened, deliberate, aware of…

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  • Rosalía — LUX

    Our Rating 10/10 flawless. Rosalía has spent years proving she can bend tradition and modernity into something uniquely hers. LUX is what happens when she stops proving and starts claiming. This is not a pop album chasing scale. It’s an album built for it. In interviews around the record, Rosalía said, “Llevo preparándome toda la…

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