Louder Than War contributors selected their favourite music books of 2025. With hundreds of books on music and culture each year, it’s always difficult to narrow down the list! We applaud all authors who published books in 2025 and encourage Louder Than War readers to explore our top reads of this year. There’s still time to put these great books on your gift list: Elizabeth Alker, Everything We Do is Music: How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop (Faber)…
Riot/Clone – Everything Else Was Just Noise 1982-2021 (Riot/Clone) LP | CD | DL Out Now A retrospective of EPs released by Riot/Clone across 4 decades tracks their anarcho punk sound from youthful singalong punk to a solid hard-hitting machine spewing out polemic. A prime example of two approaches to anarcho-punk says Nathan Brown. Riot/Clone don’t get enough credit if you ask me. Their 1995 double album Still No Government Like No Government (featuring Paco of Conflict/I.T. on…
SPARKS LIVE AT CHELSEAROYAL HOSPITAL CHELSEA, LONDON FRIDAY 12 JUNE 2026Tickets:Presale – Wednesday 3 December, 10amGeneral Sale – Friday 5 December, 10amVia: LiveAtChelsea.com Legendary band Sparks have been announced for a spectacular open-air summer concert as part of the Live At Chelsea concert series, which returns in 2026 for the first time in four years. Concert-goers can expect musical thrills and euphoric entertainment from the career-spanning show in the magnificent surroundings of the Royal Hospital Chelsea on Friday…
One of Britain’s most outstanding poets Dr John Cooper Clarke has announced a major UK tour for October and November 2026. The tour will stretch across the UK with performances in iconic venues such as London’s Palladium, Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall and Manchester’s O2 Apollo. The Salford Bard will also be releasing a brand-new book titled ‘Have It’ set for Autumn 2026 and follows on from 2024’s ‘WHAT’, an instant Sunday Times bestseller. 2025 has seen Dr John Cooper…
Nostalgia Deathstar : They Kill The Flame (State Of Bass) CD | LP | Bandcamp Our Score Nostalgia are a beautiful contradiction very much on their own terms. Their album of hypnotic electronic music embraces a future that they critique with a steely narrative that deconstructs the Trump era kaos with a nostalgia for an age yet to come. You can also dance to its melancholic Bladerunner beats. Sean Albiez and…
Ultravox: The Collection (Deluxe Edition) (Chrysalis Records) Released 5 December 2025 CD + Blu-ray | Vinyl | DL | Streaming Our Score Synth-pop stalwarts Ultravox continue to revamp their back catalogue with this expanded multi-format reissue of their biggest-selling greatest hits album. It now stretches across four CDs, with two Blu-ray discs of videos. It certainly means something to Robert Plummer. Every now and again in pop, the experimental suddenly becomes conventional. As the 1970s turned into…
Hard-working Manchester post-grunge band The Empty Page have added an atmospheric dimension to their music that gives their new single, When We Gonna Run, a haunting, almost shoegaze backdrop to its glorious wall of sound of sound. With the melodic melancholia of Smashing Pumpkins jousting with the twisted pop/noise of Sonic Youth, The Smiths, and even the atmospheric end of Killing Joke at their apocalyptic balladeering period, it’s an emotive and haunting slice of power. Set in a pre-apocalyptic…
Where’s the Money Gone?: The Battle for the Soul of English Football Adrian Goldberg An enthralling read about the death of the beautiful game and how the lack of governance is allowing football club ownership structures to milk the game to death at the expense of the fans. Like some sort of mirror reflection of the rampant capitalism that is wrecking the planet, football is running on empty whilst the owners…
The B-52s and DEVO have announced two unmissable UK co-headline shows for June 2026. The shows are scheduled at The O2 in London on Saturday 20th June and Manchester’s AO Arena on Sunday 21st June, with special guests The Rezillos and Lene Lovich. Tickets go on general sale on Friday 5 December 2025 at 10am, and you can register for pre-sale here These special shows are the UK stop on the bands’ critically acclaimed Cosmic De-Evolution tour of…
Following international acclaim for their most recent album “After Destruction”, Guadalajara, Mexico’s art-rock juggernaut Descartes A Kant bring their unique live show to Europe next week and play their first ever UK shows in Folkestone and London. Equal parts Punk, Metal, Pop, Shoegaze and Cabaret, the critically-acclaimed underground group have made a real name for themselves as an otherworldly, unpredictable theatrical live act. So much so that even the Wall Street Journal chimed to say that “trying to describe…
Album Review The High Span Blithering Spinout Nuggets LP/CD/DL Release date: – 28/11/25 Our Score Their first album was splendid. Rock and Roll for tea-sippers rather than lager drinkers. This one is too. ‘The High Span provide a strange and special blend of DIY post-pop jangle and experimental sounds, of lyric-driven guitar-indie and a bit of English awkwardness’. This is Englishness without any of the ugly connotations, says Ged Babey. For The Man With Everythingthe Perfect Gift is…
Mumford & Sons are the latest headliner to join next year’s BST Hyde Park festival series, on Saturday 4th July 2026, with The War On Drugs in support, plus further acts to be announced. Following sold out arena tours over the past few years and stellar collaborations with names such as Dylan, Springsteen and Neil Young, Mumford & Sons will be returning to London with old and new music in hand. Sixth studio album Prizefighter is due for…