It’s been a really quiet start to the year in terms of new music so I’m actually going to start 2026 with a part review.

The original Smoke & Mirrors from The Eden House was released in 2009. A beguiling confection of lush, sensual, string laden goth with a cast list to die for – Tony Pettitt, Nod and Peter Wright, Peter Yates (all Fields of the Nephilim), Simon Rippin (The Nefilim), Julianne Regan (All About Eve), Evi Vine, Monica Richards (Faith and the Muse) …

Now we get Smoke & Mirrors + Other Ghosts which extends the original album with six bonus tracks which is what I will be looking at.

Freakshow features the vocal talents of Candia McKormack (Inkubus Sukkubus) who didn’t appear on the album. A song very similar in style to To Believe in Something which is probably why it didn’t make the cut

Burn is a slower, swirling track with Amandine Ferrari doing a very good Kate Bush impression on the earlier part of the song. 

Maelstrom is a jaunty little instrumental lasting all of two minutes again with that instantly recognisable bass guitar.  

Half-Light with Evi Vine is the track that most easily could have slotted onto the album but feels unfinished and the abrupt fade out at the end sort of confirms that.

Killer is the most upbeat of the bonus tracks with another great vocal from Amandine Ferrari but it was correctly not included in the final track listing

To Believe in Something was the only track on the album to feature Monica Richards and here we get the Redshifted version which was released as a digital only single. It sounds like a demo of what was finally included on the album. A bit heavier, a bit less refined and with that throbbing Nephilim style bass of Tony Pettitt pushed more to the fore. 

Compared to some expanded albums where they are padded out with poorly recorded demos or superfluous live tracks, I think this is a worthwhile addition to the collection

 Drumroll please as it's album of the year time

for the fourteenth time and in alphabetical order - Five reviewed here and one very late entry

• Death Of The High Street - Bragging About Breaking
• Hens Bens - World's Strongest Band
• The Occasion - Songs Of The Night
• PERTURBATOR - Age Of Aquarius
• John Reed - A Proliferation Of Pointlessness
• Unreqvited - A Pathway To The Moon

 It was my best year for live music since Covid with 14 gigs and here are my favourites

February was a very poignant visit to Bristol as it was my final Fish gig, 36 years after the first one

March bought a trip to Truro to catch Public Service Broadcasting on the excellent The Last Flight tour

Onto May it was Grice at the Exeter Phoenix. Here paying tribute to Raphael Ravenscroft

October brought a new venue to visit (Things Happen Here in Dartington) to see the album launch for Abrasive Trees

And we rounded out the year with the ever brilliant Blockheads back for their annual Exeter Phoenix gig

 Probably the last review of the year and one of those albums you luckily stumble across by accident.

I was aware of PERTURBATOR as he had done some remixes for Alcest and Cult of Luna, but I’d never really looked at his albums.

Age of Aquarius is a fantastic analog synth driven album with thudding drums, think of it as a night club version of John Carpenter (especially Lunacy which could easily feature on one of his soundtracks).

Approximately half the tracks are instrumental but it’s those with the guest vocalist that caught my attention in the first place – Ulver, Author & Punisher and Alcest.

The opening track, Apocalypse Now features Ulver and would have fitted in perfectly on their Assassination of Julius Caesar album. Lyrically dark and deliciously unsettling.

The best is saved to last – the title track is a ten minute epic featuring the wordless vocals of Neige from Alcest. It ebbs and flows marvelously, almost coming to a stop at 7 minutes in before cranking up the drums for a suitable monumental finale   A note of hope after all the previous bleak dystopian sounds. 

I shall definitely be investigating the PERTURBATOR back catalogue after this.

 Very rare nowadays to be excited about a debut album as most you just come across them by accident or recommendation but Death Of The High Street have been teasing us with excellent singles since 2014.

So here is Bragging About Breaking with ten new tracks and none of the earlier singles.

It's loud, gritty, spiky and ragged in places (possibly deliberate) but then the lyrics grab you and suddenly you notice the melodies and realise this is a bloody fantastic album.

Scott Baxter is a supremely talented lyricist, a sort of northern Ian Dury or a shoutier Justin Sullivan - he is that good. 

the themes are both personal and political - from Monster (an abusive father and the worry of following the same path) to Over Now (a messy break up) and on to Never Going to Get It (justice denied).

The vitriol in Don't Look Into The Sun is palpable:

"And god save the king drowning in his Royal regalia. A palace full of pomp , fat pockets full of c*nts, it's a shame. Black limos pass the poor to make way for the tacky carriage. And they wave and chuckle safe in the bosom of money"

There are some gorgeous walking bass lines as well (the one in Present Deranged is brilliant).

Perhaps the best is left to last where the addition of some cello and female backing vocal add another dash of colour to the palette of Communication's Failed.

A resigned state of the nation address, it's almost a spiritual successor to Del Amitri's 1989 hit Nothing Ever Happens.

I maybe would have like some of those excellent early single to have been included (Exit, Age of Bronze, Mental Wealth) but that's a minor complaint.

Album of the year? Very possibly

 

 A really fascinating release from Cult Of Luna. 

Beyond I and II appear on the Long Road North album but now versions III, IV and V appear as a stand alone single.

Beyond III is the original version sung by the band guitarist with clean vocals over a brooding atmosphere and ominous synths. 

However Beyond IV takes the song to a new superlative level. The synths are replaced by strummed guitars and A.A. Williams provides her own distinct vocals. The change in key as she swoons "beneath a sky of black and blue" is spine tingling. You won't hear a better 3 minutes all year.

Finally we have a live take on version III. Beyond V adds a background of wind chimes and an extra 30 seconds to the outro.

For such an extreme band this is such a beautiful gift.

"Someone's calling out my name. I hear the echo, bleak and frail.

Every time I close my eyes. I see you.

Somethings moving up ahead. Shadows flickering and vague.

My feet are cold. My eyes are dim as I lay down.

Beneath a sky of black and blue. Into a night that never ends.

Every time I close my eyes. I see you"

 There have been very few posts on here that don’t relate to new albums, but this one isn’t even music related. I want to rant and it’s my blog so I can!

It turns out I really, really REALLY don’t like the Netflix series of Wednesday.

I managed the first episode of the second part of series 2 and realised that I don’t know what is going on and equally that I no longer give a crap about what is going on.

I should point out that I consider the Addams Family Values film one of the top five films made in my lifetime (all you cultural snobs can stop sniggering now) and that the first Addams Family film is not too far behind. Both my daughter and I can quote these films off by heart and we must watch them at least three time a year

There is so much wrong with Wednesday, but I can break it down in a few simple sections:

The Premise

The whole point of the Addams is that the humour derives from this strange family being put in everyday situations and their interaction with everyday people.

Examples from the films are Gomez reporting Fester missing to the Police, the whole family at the school play, the children at Summer Camp and Morticia reading to the nursey class in the first film – that scene alone deserved an Oscar (It’s my blog, sue me for over exaggeration).

The set up for Wednesday feels like it dribbled out of the collective fetid brains of a room full of marketing executives –

“I don’t think this has been done before…. Let’s set it in a boarding school / castle. Like Hogwarts.”     

“And let’s give all the pupils special powers. Like Hogwarts”

“Oh, and let’s have lots of famous actors playing the teachers. Like Hogwarts”.

What’s the point of being an outcast family if you’re surrounded by other outcasts?

The great love affair

Whether its John Astin and Carolyn Jones or Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston the simple fact is that Gomez and Morticia should be besotted with each other even to the point that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. At a single word of French from Morticia, Gomez should be kissing her hand and then up her arms whilst offering promises of whips and chains.

In Wednesday, Catherine Zeta-Jones says ‘Mon Cher’ and Gomez DOES NOTHING. LITERALLY NOTHING. It's almost as if they are not interested in each other.

This is just so not right, and this alone should have resulted in the cancellation of the series.

The enemy

The bad guy shouldn’t be some awful CGI monster (I mean, look at the state of it) it should be normal people with their petty vices.

From the Addams Family it’s Tully and Dr Pinder-Schloss and a simple case of greed

For the Addams Family Values, it’s the dogma of Gary Granger and Becky Martin-Granger that everyone can have a great time as long as they are good looking, white and Christian (and of course the homicidal mania of the serial killing nanny).   

Whilst I understand that Wednesday looks amazing, as any Tim Burton film does, and that the purist will bleat that “Gomez is now closer to the original comic version” I just can’t bring myself to get any sort of enjoyment out of it.