NARC.

Welcome to the digital platform of NARC. Magazine, your go-to source for alternative music and culture in the North East. We have a deep appreciation for the cultural scene in the region, and our innovative magazine and website are designed to highlight the finest in music, art, literature, comedy, film, theatre, and beyond for our loyal readers.

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TRACK REVIEW: Aaron Dinning - Seasons

2 days ago | narcmagazine.com | Niamh Poppleton

The second single from Aaron Dinning’s sophomore EP discusses the ephemeral nature of love; Seasons is an indie break-up pop track that deftly fuses sadness with summer, perfect for fans of Olivia Rodrigo.Throughout the track, melancholic vulnerability seeps into the layers of Dinning’s warm and expressive vocals. Through skillfully penned lyrics and drawn-out riffs, the track describes the emotional turbulence of patching up the cracks and losing pieces of yourself for love.
ALBUM REVIEW: Little Simz - Lotus

5 days ago | narcmagazine.com | Ikenna Offor

AWALReleased: 06.06.25Image by Thibaut GrevetOn Lotus, Little Simz doesn’t just open up, she offers a hard won blueprint for survival. After a near-breakdown and consequent crisis of confidence, the Islington-born rapper returns with her sixth studio album, a radically sincere emotional excavation that’s as stylistically fearless as it is soul-baring – an astoundingly personal reckoning with despair, self-doubt and the glimmering possibility of renewal.
TRACK REVIEW: Caitlin Morrow - Babeustupid

5 days ago | narcmagazine.com | Laura Rosierse

Funky alternative pop artist Caitlin Morrow brings a refreshing and new anthem in the form of her new song Babeustupid. With sharp vocals and a thumping rhythm leading us through its forest of sounds, the single offers a pleasant sound while poking fun at the joys of an unrewarding romantic relationship. It’s the debut single from the Darlington-based singer-songwriter, whose sharp vocals and a catchy pop soundscape has created an easy listening experience.
TRACK REVIEW: King Of The Sea - All Desire Is A Desire For Living

5 days ago | narcmagazine.com | Steve Spithray

Newcastle’s Trev Gibb channels his best Antony And The Johnsons meets Flaming Lips inner being on King Of The Sea’s All Desire Is A Desire For Living. It’s an introspective and hopeful ambient pop track with a moving message of community built upon an oddly distorted organ (or heavily effected guitar?).
ALBUM REVIEW: Kathryn Joseph - WE WERE MADE PREY.

1 week ago | narcmagazine.com | Ali Welford

Rock ActionReleased: 30.05.25Maintaining a 100% hit rate of heart-stopping stunners, Kathryn Joseph‘s fourth full-length reprises the creative partnership with fellow Scot Lomond Campbell first explored on 2022’s for you who are the wronged. And yet, while many would have welcomed more of the same, WE WERE MADE PREY. stands utterly apart not only from its predecessor, but every other record in a near-perfect catalogue.
TRACK REVIEW: Goodnight Kid - House (With A Balcony)

1 week ago | narcmagazine.com | Niamh Poppleton

Alt. emo rock band Goodnight Kid‘s House (With A Balcony) is an outstanding debut that describes the precarious boundary between emotional transparency and the tenacity of survival. The track itself is honest and emotionally vulnerable through raw, rapid and desperate instrumentation. Drawing inspiration from 2000s alt., pop-punk and Midwestern emo, the poignant and emotionally-charged lyrics describe the human proclivity towards stalling the inevitable.
INTERVIEW: Niamh Casey

1 week ago | narcmagazine.com | Laura Rosierse

Teesside-born, Newcastle-based alternative folk artist Niamh Casey shares her debut EP Memories Of My Chaotic Existence this month, on which she opens up about love, family and friendship. She’s been working on the EP for a very long time and is excited to finally release these open-hearted alternative folk pop songs into the world. Niamh started writing from a very young age and brought the songs she’s written over the years together on her debut EP.
ALBUM REVIEW: Léa Sen - Levels

1 week ago | narcmagazine.com | Jonathan Coll

Partisan RecordsReleased: 30.05.25Emergent R’n’B artists have been producing many of the UK’s finest tunes over the last decade, with the likes of Jorja Smith, Mahalia and Arlo Parks lighting the path. Léa Sen is a precocious 23-year-old French-Martiniquan singer-songwriter, producer and mixer based in London.
ALBUM REVIEW: caroline - caroline 2

1 week ago | narcmagazine.com | Lee Fisher

Rough TradeReleased: 30.05.25From the first play of opener Total Euphoria, it was clear they’d done it again. A pure, clear guitar line turns into a lurching, almost shoegaze passage, violins and faltering drums and gorgeous overlapping vocals, before a blast of cleansing, euphoric noise rips the song apart and the voices come to the fore, that collective, almost hymnal, quality caroline have.
INTERVIEW: CAMERON SCOTT

2 weeks ago | narcmagazine.com | Steve Spithray

When I was an art student I used to spend hours studying Cornish bays and beaches, cynically reinterpreting them as immature red, blue and green watercolours for marks. Despite this clinical quest for grades, I always found some kind of melancholic solace in the tranquillity of a place I hardly knew, of a place where romance was no longer dead but the sadness was as authentic as the fishing boats.