maxmand

And, while the occasional guitar seems a little edgier and Max Martin himself doesn’t appear to have directly worked on these versions (trusted lieutenant and original co-producer Shellback does the honours, alongside others, on those songs “for MXM Productions”), ‘Red’’s astoundingly deep original tracklist is flawlessly recreated. It may be hard to imagine Swift coming up with something as frothy as ‘Stay Stay Stay’ in 2021, but to hear her sing ... read more

It’s hard to believe it now, but Kanye West used to be one of the most experimental and talented figures in modern hip-hop. From the fierce ambition of his game-altering debut The College Drop-Out twenty years ago, to 2010’s mangled and grandiose rap masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he’s been responsible for some truly trailblazing work, but more recently, he’s struggled to match his past heights. Back in 2015, he declared himself “the greatest living ... read more

It’s not that there’s anything especially bad here, as it’s an inoffensive listen, with good musicianship and decent lyricism, but there’s just nothing too remarkable here. In trying to be more accessible to the radio listener, Real Estate appears to have blunted its own creative edge. I never hated listening to the album, but as it wore on, each song became indistinguishable from the next, with one notable exception, the 60s-inspired “Victoria”, which was ... read more

“I’m not saying I’m not a careerist,” Bill Ryder-Jones told NME in 2019. “Where I am now is good; a little more success would be great but any more than that would be too much.”

At that time, the Wirral singer-songwriter (and co-founder of his former band the Coral) was talking up ‘Yawny Yawn’, a skeletal, piano-led reworking of ‘Yawn’, the grunge-inspired collection he’d released the previous year. For Ryder-Jones, ... read more