Reviews Archives – Battleground.eu

Reviews

Past and Present

By Charlie Bertsch
Posted on 25 November 202127 November 2021
Posted in Reviews

Holland in America. SXSW, March 2019.

Although it’s easy to list Pip Blom’s forebears, especially the Riot Grrl-inflected pop of the 1990s, their second album Welcome Break still sounds like it was made from scratch. (More…)

Music is Underrated

By Steven Rubio
Posted on 19 November 202119 November 2021
Posted in Reviews

Einstürzende Neubauten, in a nutshell. Rome, 2017.

Charlie Bertsch begins the illuminating introduction to his new book Listening for the Future by posing a question: “What do we ask of popular music?” (More…)

Inequality is Still Wrong

By John Foster
Posted on 12 November 202115 November 2021
Posted in Reviews

Neoliberal Milano. Corso Garibaldi, November 2021.

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Penned towards the end of the Vietnam War by Hunter S. Thompson, in his 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the statement sounds truer than ever. (More…)

Pandemic Expressionism

By Charlie Bertsch
Posted on 10 November 202110 November 2021
Posted in Reviews

Sonic Hauntology, Raz Mesinai’s new album of field recordings for The Battleground, pushes that peculiar genre in exciting new directions. (More…)

A Woman in Berlin

By Charlie Bertsch
Posted on 27 October 202127 October 2021
Posted in Reviews

Lyra Pramuk. Barcelona, 2019.

Imagine that you are listening to the new Lyra Pramuk album Delta without knowing anything about it. (More…)

More Than a Nostalgia Exercise

By John Foster
Posted on 15 October 202115 October 2021
Posted in Reviews

Old punks never die. They go on German tours instead.

Ronald Reagan was elected to a second term as America’s president in November 1984. (More…)

The Sixties Are Forever

By Charlie Bertsch
Posted on 13 October 202113 October 2021
Posted in Reviews

Never left his garage. Billy Childish, London.

Since his early days with the Pop Rivets in the late 1970s, Billy Childish’s music has been remarkably consistent. (More…)

The Market or Else

By John Foster
Posted on 1 October 20211 October 2021
Posted in Reviews

Pandemic aspirations. Weidendammer Bridge, Berlin.

In Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy, Adam Tooze cites a fund manager’s assessment of the difficulties facing traders when the pandemic blew up in March 2020: (More…)

Grenfell Dub

By Charlie Bertsch
Posted on 29 September 202129 September 2021
Posted in Reviews

Grenfell Tower after the fire. London, June 2017.

Fire, the new album by The Bug, hits hard, even harder than its rather distant predecessors, London Zoo (2008) and Pressure (2003). But it also hits soft. (More…)