Synth-pop veterans Alphaville begin their 40th anniversary celebrations with a new album of symphonic recordings with the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg. … More Review of Alphaville, Eternally Yours (2022)
This restrained return for the princes of piano pop is easy to like but harder to love. … More Review of Keane, Cause and Effect (2019)
Alphaville’s two-night extravanganza at the Whisky a Go Go makes a late but compelling case that they are much more than a synth-pop band. … More Review of Alphaville: Live at the Whisky a Go Go. From Hollywood with Love (2018)
Keane frontman Tom Chaplin provides a warm and thought-provoking approach to Christmas. … More Tom Chaplin, Royal Festival Hall, 12 December
“A committed attempt to add something different to the pop landscape.” A review of Alphaville’s latest album, Strange Attractor (Universal, 2017). … More Review of Alphaville, Strange Attractor (2017)
2014 had all the ingredients to be the best year I’ve ever had. That it turned out to be one of the worst is quite remarkable. … More Finite Fortunes: An Epilogue, 2014
More people than ever are still looking for a philosophy on life that offers any comfort. During the New Year, a time when we deliberately parse our minds for retrospection and hope, I thought about the paradox of interconnectedness: how, by superficially feeling closer together than ever before, we might never feel further apart. … More Mortal Longing
Should Keane top the charts with Strangeland later today, they will swiftly follow Coldplay (and another of my dear charges, Erasure) into an exclusive list of British bands to have achieved a fifth consecutive number one album. … More Sovereign Lights: Keane’s Strangeland
So console myself of a difficult anniversary, I have turned to the virtues of music, setting myself a challenge to select songs for friends that reflected how I see them. … More Music: Between Minds, Between Friends
The release of the second single of Alphaville’s Catching Rays on Giant, ‘Song for no-one’, coincides with the second anniversary of Writing Privacy. … More The Second Anniversary: A Song For No-One
Writing Privacy 