How did an Aussie, a Texan, an Irishman and three Cumbrians find themselves on the road on the Ukrainian frontline? For classic rock collective Hardwicke Circus, it was a no-brainer: ‘We thought they’d like to hear some rock’n’roll’

It is late October and, 10 kilometres from the frontline in Donetsk, east Ukraine, the inhabitants of a reconditioned ambulance are completely lost. While opening your phone and logging on to a maps app might appear the obvious solution, this would be extremely unwise here: Russian drones are overhead and hunting for any signals.

Inside the van are a motley crew: an 81-year-old Irish music industry veteran; a 72-year-old Texas rocker; an Australian keyboardist; a Ukrainian saxophonist; and three twenty-something musicians from Carlisle, Cumbria. Their destination is a military base where they are to perform for Ukrainian troops.

Brian King Joseph claims the rapper and actor was ‘priming’ him for ‘sexual exploitation’. Smith’s lawyer has called the allegations ‘false, baseless and reckless’

Will Smith is being sued by a violinist from his 2025 tour, who claims the rapper and actor exhibited “predatory behaviour” and was “deliberately grooming and priming” him for “further sexual exploitation”. Brian King Joseph is also pursuing the performer and his company Treyball Studios Management for wrongful termination and retaliation in a suit filed in the superior court of California.

Joseph alleges that he was hired for the tour in support of Smith’s new album, Based on a True Story, after first appearing on stage with Smith in December 2024. The suit claims that Smith once told Joseph, “You and I have such a special connection that I don’t have with anyone else.”

(Blue Blood International/Cooking Vinyl)
The four-piece try to tap into modern pop’s deep well of nostalgia but come off like Westlife on a bad day

‘Blue’s in the house / Oh it’s party time!” muse the fortysomething man-band on Souls of the Underground, the penultimate song on this seventh album, and the fourth since their 2011 reunion. The British four-piece are keen to take us back to their early 00s heyday, a time of Met bar table service, where the ladies have “a little prosecco” and the guys have a “nice cold beer”. Musically, it’s a clunkier approximation of their (comparatively) harder-edged hybrid of pop, hip-hop and R&B; think 2002 “low ride” anthem Fly By II but on a Megabus budget.

It makes sense that they would want to tap into modern pop’s deep well of nostalgia, but rather than recalling what made Blue originally stand out, Reflections often feels like a tribute to other evergreen boybands. For most of the album’s 13 tracks, the tempo is mid, with the dreary, Westlife-on-a-bad-day Candlelight Fades a particular nadir. The windswept One Last Time and The Day the Earth Stood Still are attacked with gusto, but both feel like Patience-era Take That, while the pleasingly epic opener The Vow is hindered by very un-Barlow lyrics: “You’re a sweet child of mine / You’re like a grape to my vine.”