Music / 16/11/2021 Newton Faulkner at The Waterfront, 29/10/2021, with Support Acts Nati Dreddd and Sam Brookes

Nati Dreddd played lively, strummed pop songs and two covers. She seemed nervous but belted rowdily in her own Scottish accent, which is a welcome thing in a world of bland transatlantic voices.  Her best-performed song was her last, an old Gaelic-language stomper. She said, “It’s really fast, I cannae breathe when I sing it...

Music, Venue / 16/11/2021 Becky Hill: The Powerhouse at LCR

Becky Hill is one of the top pop artists of the century. With hit after hit in the charts, it’s no wonder her gig at UEA’s LCR was sold out. With a voice like hers, the LCR was an ideal venue that truly showcased her vocal talent and stage presence.  Before Becky took to the...

Music / 16/11/2021 Interview with Newton Faulkner

Newton Faulkner, English singer, guitarist, and songwriter, and I are talking about the song ‘Killing Time’ from his new album. It’s a cathartic, hopeful anthem about the difficulty of last year’s lockdowns.  “I think I take the responsibility of putting things out into the world quite seriously,” he says. “It definitely intensified when I had...

Music, Venue / 16/11/2021 Why Bands like Jungle are Important in 2021

When Tom McFarland and Josh Lloyd-Watson burst onto the scene under the name Jungle in 2014, it seemed that the UK’s electronic scene had a new pioneer. A few years later, they returned with their second album For Ever, a slow, melancholic affair largely inspired by both members of the duo’s recent breakups. That was...

Music / 26/10/2021 Rolling Stone Magazine, Are These Really the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time?

Ranking music is a bizarre idea. Whilst it makes sense to rank your own favourite songs, to try to be representative of wider society’s views is nigh on impossible.  Rolling Stone Magazine consistently insists on trying though, and its latest effort was published last month when it revealed what it deems as the ‘500 Greatest...

Music / 26/10/2021 Something Else: Wet Leg/Inhaler at the Waterfront, 7th October

7:30pm, The Adrian Flux Waterfront…  You suspect most of the big British bands had their start in places like this. With the space too tight to fit this many people, where the lights – blue then purple – hang heavy in the air and mix with the smoke haze coating the room.  In a seven-song...

Music

How important are lyrics in music?
Image: Pixabay
Music

How important are lyrics in music?

An interesting question, and one I’m sure many have an immediate answer for.  Are lyrics more important in certain genres rather than others? Do they improve the song? Or are they always necessary?  It’s difficult to know where to begin but I’d argue lyrics have a high degree of importance in music.  Initially, melody is…

Muse – Origin of Symmetry Turns Twenty
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Music

Muse – Origin of Symmetry Turns Twenty

Earlier in June, Muse’s sophomore album Origin of Symmetry celebrated its twentieth anniversary. This marked twenty years of the futuristic, dystopian project which has not only become a trade mark in Muse’s discography but also cemented itself as a classic in the hard rock genre.  To begin to understand this album, it is important to…

ALBUM REVIEW: Wolf Alice – Blue Weekend
Photo: Album cover: Wolf Alice via Ian Cheek Press (cropped)
Music

ALBUM REVIEW: Wolf Alice – Blue Weekend

Wolf Alice’s Blue Weekend isa tightly packed and exquisitely produced album which takes the best of their previous works while managing to create its own identity. The instrumental arrangements are refined and contained, while Ellie Rowsell’s vocals and lyricism are at an all-time high. The album opens with ‘The Beach’, a beautiful arrangement of acoustic…

ALBUM REVIEW: Squid – Bright Green Field
Photo credit: Squid.
Music

ALBUM REVIEW: Squid – Bright Green Field

It’s been a couple of years since Squid’s breakout single ‘Houseplants’, an expertly organized mess of post-punk and jazz, but the band formed in Brighton has pushed their experimentation and genre-dabbling to a whole new level on their debut Bright Green Field. The first single, ‘Narrator’, is a sprawl of shrieking instrumentals, cryptic song writing,…

An interview with Grammy nominated Wolf Alice: talking Blue Weekend, returning to live performance, and more
Photo Credit: Jordan Hemingway
Music

An interview with Grammy nominated Wolf Alice: talking Blue Weekend, returning to live performance, and more

Wolf Alice are a band that need no introduction, but here’s one anyway. For the past decade they’ve showcased their exceptional versatility, first as a duo of frontwoman Ellie Rowsell and guitarist Joff Oddie, then later expanding to form a four-piece with bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey. Their music is a marvel to…

It’s a love story: Taylor Swift kicks off re-recordings with ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Music

It’s a love story: Taylor Swift kicks off re-recordings with ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’

When Scooter Braun bought Taylor Swift’s masters for an alleged $300 million in 2019, there was no doubt in Swift’s mind that she would be reclaiming her first six albums through carefully constructed re-recordings. This would both make the original records worthless and give Swift full ownership of her back catalogue. It makes sense that…

The best albums to study to
Photo: Unsplash
Music

The best albums to study to

Studying is such a personal thing, and what you do to help you study looks a little different for everyone. For some, they need complete silence, or to listen to a TV show, or to listen to their favourite pop album. For me, it has to be something more instrumental. I have to listen to…


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The University of East Anglia’s official student newspaper. Concrete is in print and online.

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