Jeremy Allen

How Air’s Moon Safari Made The World Take French Pop Seriously

Change was in the air in 1998 when a duo from Versailles released an album that did better internationally than it did in France. Jeremy Allen wonders if Moon Safari by Air was the point where Anglo Saxons stopped ignoring the surreptitious delights of French pop

Renu

They Dance In The Dark

Composer, producer and percussionist Renu Hossain produces her richest work yet, a gift from a citizen of everywhere to “all the witches, weirdos, queers, femmes and nerds of this cosmos”.

Fuck Posterity: Serge Gainsbourg, Hip Hop & His Swan Song, You’re Under Arrest

You’re Under Arrest - the final album of Serge Gainsbourg - is often cited as the one where he tried his hand at hip hop. Jeremy Allen argues that it was more a consolidation of a proto-rap master after years of innovation and petty musical larceny

LIVE REPORT: Omar Souleyman In Paris

Beyond Syrian wedding singer, wayyy beyond hipster fad, Omar Souleyman is remarkable, hypnotic and at the peak of his powers. By Jeremy Allen

LIVE REPORT: Liars In Paris

Angus Andrew and the Bateh twins bring a magnificent, pulverising Liars’ greatest hits set to the Maroquinerie in Paris.

A Bottle In Front Of Me: The Strange World Of… Tom Waits

Tom Waits announced a remaster and reissue programme for all of his -ANTI material; here Jeremy Allen looks for ten points of entry into his bewildering and large back catalogue

Waiting In The Wings: On Jacques Brel, David Bowie And Death

Jacques Brel and David Bowie had more in common than just their genius. Jeremy Allen revisits Brel’s final album Les Marquises and notices some parallels with the latter’s latter days

Franz Ferdinand Live In Paris & Alex Kapranos Interview

Our man in Paris Jeremy Allen goes to hear Franz Ferdinand's new album Always Ascending played live in front of a small audience and hangs out with Alex Kapranos after the show

Full Of Promise And Cum: Baxter Dury’s Prince Of Tears

It's time for a beautiful, heart-rending, sexy, repulsive album about “emotionally blunted men who are fucked-up”. By Jeremy Allen.

Touching Base With France’s Former First Lady: Carla Bruni Interviewed

Jeremy Allen interviews Carla Bruni in Paris about her new album French Touch, but politics is strictly interdict. “I wish good luck to Mr and Mrs Trump, I wish good luck to Mr and Mrs Macron, and I don’t care, do you understand?”

A Beautiful Zombie: The Psychedelic Furs At Kentish Town Forum

It's decades since they made a new record, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't. Jeremy Allen is seduced by a night of nostalgia and goes home wanting more.

Huoratron

XXVI CRIMES OF LOVE

Five years after his debut, the Finnish perfectionist releases his second album. It's a corker.

Various Artists

Closed Circuits: Australian Alternative Electronic Music Of The 70s & 80s Volume 1

A entertaining and illuminating compilation of electronic music from Down Under, long ago

Arrows Of Love

Product

Anger, irony and raging guitars on the second album from Arrows Of Love

Maelstrom! Sparks Interviewed

Jeremy Allen meets Ron and Russell Mael in Paris to talk Morrissey, Moroder, Tati, Adjani, Carax, Ronson and Rundgren, and to discover what it’s like to make music as siblings for nearly 50 years

Fangs For The Memories: The Lost Boys And The Infantilization Of The Vampire

Jeremy Allen looks back at the history of the vampire film and analyses one of the genre's most influential entries, Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys. And, no, we haven't used that headline already.

But You’re Not Really Here: Lana Del Rey Live At Brixton Academy

Lana Del Rey is a modern-day Karen Carpenter, reckons Jeremy Allen at her Brixton show - tragic and kitsch, familiar and unknowable, a simple complex pop star.

Abominable Show, Man! Faith No More’s Roddy Bottum Interviewed

Jeremy Allen talks to Roddy Bottum about smuggling gay sex up the charts, as well as tragedy, comedy, and his new Edinburgh show Sasquatch: The Opera which he’s expecting to be taken “very seriously”

Avert Your Eyez: The Trouble With Biopics

With Tupac biography All Eyez On Me currently in cinemas, Jeremy Allen goes to bat against the music biopic

Malcolm Lowry’s Under The Volcano – The First Great Addiction Memoir

Under the Volcano was written as a novel, but it told deep truths about addiction, says Jeremy Allen, in an age before it was expected that a memoir of excess should end with recovery

Funky Chimes

various artists

Faith No More’s Angel Dust & The Art Of Following Up A Phenomenon

Jeremy Allen looks back 25 years to Faith No More's Angel Dust and finds a band devising strategies to deal with their phenomenal and unexpected success

Georges Grünblatt

K-Priss (Reissue)

Enter Room 29: Jarvis Cocker And Chilly Gonzales Interviewed

With the release of their new collaboration, Room 29, Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzales talk to Jeremy Allen about outsiderism, their work together, and the redemptive qualities of an erect Mickey Mouse

Desperate Journalist

Grow Up

Jarvis Cocker Speaks On Upcoming French Elections

Ex-Pulp frontman's fear about the upcoming elections stems from the number 23

Forget Lodger, Iggy Pop’s The Idiot Is The Last Piece Of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy

Was David Bowie's trilogy actually a quadrilogy; heck, was it actually a pentalogy; or, asks Jeremy Allen, is Berlin simply a state of mind?

A Stellular Selection: Rose Dougall’s Favourite Albums

As she prepares to tour new album Stellular, Rose Dougall guides Jeremy Allen through her favourite 13 records, from dub reggae to folk and the otherworldly pop of Broadcast

Pop’s Lingua Franca: La Femme Live At Le Zénith

Jeremy Allen enters the psychotropical live spectale of La Femme, who could be the next Christine and the Queens, if they'd only change

The Rise Of Fear & The Strange Death Of The UFO

UFOs were once at the heart of popular culture and science fiction, with even an American president claiming he'd had a strange encounter. Jeremy Allen looks at the strange decline of the little green men, asking if it's a symptom of our troubled age

Jeremy Allen On Mick Harvey’s Intoxicated Women

In the fourth (and supposedly final) instalment of Mick Harvey's Serge Gainsbourg albums, Jeremy Allen finds a fitting culmination to an unprecedented 22 years of dedication to the deceased French icon – not just a satisfying end, but a promising jumping off point, too

Three Songs All Flash: Jean-Michel Jarre Live In Paris

It's about time that electronic innovator Jean-Michel Jarre was invited to sit at the top table with Kraftwerk, argues Jeremy Allen after watching him play live