Sticking to a winning template

Dorian Lynskey
Three decades and 11 albums in, the Pet Shop Boys still feel like they are renting their place as unlikely pop stars.

Defying death: Disco has a life of its own

Dorian Lynskey
Dance floor pioneers Robin Gibb and Donna Summer may have died, but the beat goes on and disco remains the foundation of all modern pop.

It's a laugh a minute with Leonard – seriously

Dorian Lynskey
Sombre prophet, mordant wisecracker, ­repentant cad: Leonard Cohen is back with a great new ­album, old ideas and more wit and wisdom.

Posthumous music perils

Dorian Lynskey
Posthumous albums are troubling entities, and Amy Winehouse's "new" album is no exception.

Tricky and contradictory

Dorian Lynskey
Scowling, paranoid and up for a fight - That's the image with which Tricky is saddled. Dorian Lynskey in London finds out if the rumours are true.

Killer tunes

Dorian Lynskey
The first sound you hear is a bright, solitary trumpet. Then comes a rumbling tuba, rattling drums and the familiar refrain of John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever. A behemoth of a guitar riff lumbers in with a flurry of banjo, a skirl of bagpipes, a battery of percussion and squeals of brass overlaid until they sound like a stampede of panicking elephants. And on it goes, like the devil's own mix tape.
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