Toppermost - Music site with a difference

Clip of the Week

At the time of writing, Therapy? have just finished recording album number 17. Bands this deep into their recording career often find themselves in a creative slump. Deep Purple’s 17th album Bananas is widely regarded as their worst. Black Sabbath’s #17 is the lumpen Cross Purposes. Neil Young’s 16th and 17th releases are the execrable Old Ways and Landing On Water (and I love Neil Young). And that’s if bands ever get to album #17. AC/DC only managed it in 2020 with Power Up (it’s a bit meh). Therapy? can see in their rearview mirror, bands who had a huge head start on them such as U2, Aerosmith and R.E.M. – a measly 15 albums each. Their mates Manic Street Preachers? 15 and counting… (READ ON)

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This Week’s Book Choice

“Everything We Do Is Music: How 20th Century Classical Music Shaped Pop” by Elizabeth Alker (Faber & Faber, 2025).

“This fantastic book has taken me absolutely ages to get through. Not because it’s boring, or full of leaden prose, it’s because I have to keep breaking off reading to go and investigate the music that she’s so infectiously enthusiastic about. It sounds a little bit hyperbolic but I think it’s a book that could definitely alter the way you listen to and appreciate music.” Andy Mackenzie

The worlds of pop and rock owe a much greater debt to the classical canon than we realise. A direct and fascinating lineage draws from the experimentalism of Pierre Henry to The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, from Stockhausen to Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and from Bruckner to Sonic Youth via Glenn Branca.

In “Everything We Do Is Music”, Elizabeth Alker shines a light on the fertile ground that exists between the borders of classical music and pop.

Read all our previous book reviews here.

Toppermost Recommends

London’s The Hanging Stars return with their sixth album, Just A Day – a dazzling collection of four-part harmonies, shimmering twelve-string guitars and chiming songs, touching on themes of longing, new beginnings and the fragility of the everyday. Recorded at Edwyn Collins’ legendary Clashnarrow Studios in the Scottish Highlands, the album marks a bold new chapter for the band, produced with the invaluable guidance of Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love.

“An exhilarating album of cascading riffs and rhythms, harmonies and hooks that are very much rooted in the present while paying respect to the influences that inform this innovative and gifted band.” Americana UK