Nice Day For Screaming

“We think it's our best work in a very, very long time,” Kian Egan of Irish pop legends Westlife tells Apple Music. Nine years after their last studio album, Gravity, Egan, Nicky Byrne, Mark Feehily, and Shane Filan have reunited. “We met as a band and said, ‘What should Westlife sound like in 2019?’” Filan says. “A lot has happened in music since our last tour.” They’re right that pop has moved in many directions since those 2012 “farewell” shows in Europe and China—and especially since their 1999 breakout hit “Flying Without Wings”—but Spectrum absorbs those changes into their sound. The 11 tracks showcase the quartet’s enduring chemistry through irresistible harmonies. “The Westlife sound is based on us as singers more than a type of song or a tempo,” says Egan. “We've managed to create a really cool new uptempo sound, but it still sounds like us, because at the end of the day, it's us singing that makes it a Westlife song.”

This whopping 30-CD box set gathers together the best of Trojan's three-disc box set series. Included are the Ska, DJ, Dub, Instrumentals, Jamaican Superstars, Lovers, Producer Series, Rocksteady, Roots, and Tribute to Bob Marley volumes, each of which can be found under Trojan Box Set for their individual reviews. What's lacking here is a booklet with additional notes and information; the bulk seems to demand some extra coverage and care, yet all that's here are the original notes of each volume – only as much text as can fit on the back of the CD sleeves. From a music standpoint, however, this box is excellent; a truly diverse and comprehensive collection. Of the 500 songs, less than ten reappear on another volume, so you get a more-than-satisfying amount of music spanning the history of the Trojan label.

Ron Boots is the most well-known and successful electronic musician from The Netherlands.
Hearing the first notes of the title track it is not hard to hear Ron’ recognizable signature: innovative rhythms, great sequences nice solos and a lot of room for the finest sounds around. "Save It For A Rainy Day" shows the melodically side of Ron, almost like symphonic rock. In the epic "Well! So What?" (with 18:25 minutes one of the longest tracks he has ever recorded) Harold van der Heijden plays drums in the middle part. "Well! So What?" gives us some of the best Boots-sequences ever. "Giants Of Once Before" is a live recording from the Gruga Park in Essen, Germany of Ron together with his friends Harold van der Heijden and Kees Aerts. It is a rather melancholically piece with a driven solo.
"Close, But Not Touching" really sets new standards in melodically electronic music.

The original Who's Better, Who's Best: The Videos was a handy laserdisc consisting of 17 videos, an inordinate number of them overlapping at least in part with material from the movie The Kids Are Alright – which was OK, as the latter was never widely available as a laserdisc…

The 80s Compilation market is a minefield - a lack of variety, re-recorded versions, poor sound quality among the pitfalls - but Demon Music Groups' "100 Hits" series have been the pick of the bunch in recent times…

Over the last decade, Cleveland wunderkind Dylan Baldi’s Cloud Nothings project has evolved from a ramshackle, home-recorded indie-pop concern to a full-blown punk-pop outfit combining melodic sweetness, pummeling arrangements, and throat-searing vocals. Their previous album, 2017’s Life Without Sound, found Baldi and co. dialing back their characteristic aggression a bit. But on Cloud Nothings’ fifth album, Baldi’s coruscated bark is back in action, along with the hook-laden intensity that’s been present since 2012’s breakthrough Attack on Memory. The band’s penchant for epic song structures has also returned (see: the ebb and flow of the 11-minute “Dissolution”), as Last Building Burning represents Cloud Nothings doing what they do best with zero frills and plenty of passion to spare.