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Would you like an atom bomb? I'm gonna have to get back to you on that.

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Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #7 :     Pluribus You kind of want to hate Vince Gilligan, don’t you? Not content with creating two of the best TV shows ever made with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the man has somehow managed to go three for three with this audaciously weird post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Conceived, in part, as a showcase for Rhea Seehorn’s prodigious acting talents (she criminally failed to scoop a single Emmy for her phenomenal turn in BCS), this quirky tale sees humanity afflicted with an alien virus that combines everyone’s consciousness into a single, blissfully happy hive mind. Everyone, that is, except 13 survivors, scattered across the globe, including curmudgeonly romantasy author Carol Sturka, who finds herself faced with a global collective hell bent on… making her happy? It’s an absolutely wild premise but it’s Gilligan’s deliberate, often oblique style of storytelling that makes it so captivating. Seehorn is, as you’d expect,...
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He had white horses and ladies by the score

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 28/02/71 : Emerson, Lake & Palmer -  Emerson, Lake & Palmer Our fourth visit with ELP and our third this year - it looks like the prog kings are going to be declared kings of the prog year, so I think we know what we're going to be getting here. Hmmm - yes, it's very prog indeed. There's certainly no doubting the skills involved - Emerson in particular shines on the keyboards playing a lot of notes very quickly in many places on the album (Palmer also does an awful lot of drumming on "Tank", but we don't need to talk about that). But - does that make it great? Or even likeable? I didn't mind "Lucky Man" but apart from that I'm really not so sure - and I think that's probably all I have to say on the matter at this time, your honour. We're at #11 in the charts this week on their fourteenth week of a very decent 26 week run, with #4 being as high as it got in its second week...
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What the fuck is wrong with Seattle?

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Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #9 :     The Last Of Us Not since Nick Faldo beat Greg Norman in the 1996 Masters has the swing of a golf club proved so controversial. The second season of HBO’s adaptation of the lauded video game series from Naughty Dog was always going to ruffle feathers, but Episode 2 of this latest run  managed to traumatise each and every one of the show’s fans while delivering an hour of television that stands up to the very best ever produced. With a few deviations to better fit the format, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann cleaved closely to the game structure, taking Ellie (Bella Ramsay) down a far darker path than last time as she heads to Seattle with Isabella Merced’s Dina on a bloody quest for vengeance. By turns exciting (the siege!), uplifting (‘Take On Me’!), horrifying (the basement), and utterly devastating (a body behind a horse), The Last Of Us might have proved divisive, but no one can doubt its potency...
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Someone told me long ago there's a calm before the storm

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 07/03/71 : Pendulum - Creedence Clearwater Revival Our third trip with CCR and I've apparently enjoyed the previous two, but have to admit I don't really remember anything about them - in my defence, the last one was 5.5 years ago. I'm looking forward to becoming reacquainted with them though - hopefully it will jog my memory. Yeah, I recognised the general "swamp rock" sound and was surprised to know "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" which I don't think I knew was by them - we've actually previously met a somewhat different version on this . The rest of it is very much in a similar vibe and all well played and perfectly listenable, except when things go a bit off-kilter towards the end of the album on "Rude Awakening #2" (and even worse on "45 Revolutions Per Minute" if you listen to the bonus tracks). It's not really a sound we've heard this year so that was nice - s...
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Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove and the eagle flies with the dove

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 14/03/71 : Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills Another artist with multiple visits in the year - I'd just assumed we'd already met his debut solo album but for some reason it didn't occur to me that Stephen Stills 2 might not be his debut (it's fair to say I don't always apply logic to such things). I didn't mind our last visit with that lad, but interestingly I declared it to be nicely different for the year - and since then we've had Leonard Cohen, Nash, Crosby and a couple of Elton John albums which haven't been a million miles away. I have reasonably high hopes for this one though... He starts off with "Love The One You're With" which I obviously knew and liked, but I'm not sure I ever knew was by him - so that was a pleasant surprise (which I'll undoubtedly forget immediately). And the rest of it is all decent enough - I feel it hit me more than his follow-up did (but if I...
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We come from the land of the ice and snow

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 21/03/71 : III - Led Zeppelin The coincidences continue with our previous two albums having being Kasabian's Act III and our seventh visit with Elton John - so III is obviously our seventh visit with Led Zep. And my expectations are considerably higher than they would have been before I met all their previous albums - I've grown to almost like them over the years. Yeah - you can hear this is them heading in the direction of IV and "Stairway To Heaven". It has one or two misteps for me, but as a whole I thought it was an interesting enough album and I suspect it would be fascinating to listen to them all in order to hear their progression. I was surprised to recognise "The Gallows Pole" from Robert Plant's later version and I also know "The Immigrant Song" from somewhere but I've no idea where (Wikipedia tells me that it was one of the few songs they released as a single - they've on...
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It's a little bit funny, this feelin' inside

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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 28/03/71 : Elton John - Elton John Well, this is a bit of a surprise with our seventh visit with Elton coming one week after our previous visit - I'm expecting this to be pretty enjoyable in the same vein. Yeah - he really hit the ground running in those early days with another very decent set of heartfelt songs showing a good amount of variety across the album. It opens up with "Your Song" which is up there with his very finest and I was also vaguely aware of "Border Song" because me and the lovely Mrs Reed saw him play it live on his farewell tour  - I didn't know any of the others but still found them enjoyable. Once again, this is an album which hits on first listen but is also going to grow on you with multiple visits - it's a very accomplished piece of work. We're at #11 in the charts this week on his ninth week of a thirteen week run with it having peaked at #5 in its fifth week - this wa...
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