sun 13/07/2025

New Music reviews, news & interviews

Music Reissues Weekly: Beggars Arkive - Gary Numan's 1979 John Peel session

Kieron Tyler

Tubeway Army’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric” hit the top of the UK single’s chart in the last week of June 1979. It stayed there for four weeks. Its parent album, Replicas, lodged itself in the Top 75 for 31 weeks. In April, just as Replicas was out, Tubeway Army began recording demos for the next album: the band which had been assembled for the task debuted on BBC2’s The Old Grey Whistle Test on 22 May.

Album: Wet Leg - moisturizer

Kathryn Reilly

War, pestilence, famine, death. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of them all. So what better time to visit the genuinely sunny uplands – the long-anticipated second album from Wet Leg.

Album: Tami Neilson - Neon Cowgirl

Thomas H Green

Tami Neilson’s career is long and storied. The short version is that she began with a 1990s Canadian family band (opening for Kitty Wells, aged 10...

The Estonian Song and Dance Celebration 2025...

Kieron Tyler

The branch of the fast-food chain Hesburger in downtown Tallinn shopping centre Solaris is busy. Nothing unusual as it’s located by the entrance to a...

Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry

Joe Muggs

I met Mark Stewart once. It was on a platform at Clapham Junction, I wouldn’t normally approach a famous person like that, but I felt I had to pay my...

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First Person: country singer Tami Neilson on the superpower of sisterhood

Tami Neilson

The Canadian-born, New Zealand-based artist on how women have empowered her career

Album: Gwenno - Utopia

Kieron Tyler

The Welsh musical explorer surveys her life

Sabrina Carpenter, Hyde Park BST review - a sexy, sparkly, summer phenomenon

Katie Colombus

The Summer of Sabrina continues to shine bright

Album: Olafur Arnalds and Talos - A Dawning

Tim Cumming

Shimmery, shiny Icelandic-Irish ambience steeped in beauty

Music Reissues Weekly: Motörhead - The Manticore Tapes

Kieron Tyler

Snapshot of Lemmy and co in August 1976 proves fascinating

Album: Barry Can't Swim - Loner

Kathryn Reilly

Dive in to some sizzling summer dance music

Glastonbury Festival 2025: Five Somerset summer days of music, controversy and beautiful mayhem

Caspar Gomez

The full, brain-frazzling, immersive deep dive into Worthy Farm's music and arts spectacular

Album: Kesha - .

Thomas H Green

After a decade of tribulation, a new beginning matches stadium heft to club-pop bounce

Album: Claudia Brücken - Night Mirror

Thomas H Green

The Propaganda singer returns with an album of elegant, varied grown-up pop

Album: Mocky - Music Will Explain (Choir Music Vol. 1)

Joe Muggs

Is the Canadian polymath hiding behind his exquisite production and arrangement skill?

Album: Brìghde Chaimbeul - Sunwise

Kieron Tyler

A singular sonic auteur reshapes traditional Celtic music

Music Reissues Weekly: Rupert’s People - Dream In My Mind

Kieron Tyler

How ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ transformed a London mod-pop band

Album: JF Robitaille & Lail Arad - Wild Moves

Thomas H Green

A set of graceful, wry melancholy from an Anglo-Canadian singer-songwriter duo

Album: Lorde - Virgin

James Mellen

Sombre self-examination and scratchy cellos fail to ignite on the New Zealander's new LP

Album: Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums

Liz Thomson

The Boss: Finding joy in imperfections

Brad Mehldau Trio, St George's Bristol review - exquisite intelligence

Mark Kidel

A brilliant trio in scintillating conversation

Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - help!

John Carvill

Ian Leslie loses himself in amateur psychology, and fatally misreads The Beatles

Album: BC Camplight - A Sober Conversation

Kieron Tyler

Brian Christinzio exorcises childhood trauma

theartsdesk on Vinyl 91: Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, Tropical Fuck Storm, Sparks, The Sisters of Mercy and more

Thomas H Green

The vastest regular record reviews in the galaxy

Album: Durand and the Indications - Flowers

Mark Kidel

Languorous neo-soul to chill by

Music Reissues Weekly: The Sonics - High Time

Kieron Tyler

Handsome box set of seven-inchers celebrating the ferocious Sixties rockers

Album: Benson Boone - American Heart

Katie Colombus

Retro-Americana, pop-rock sheen, and big-hearted ballads - all with a wink

Album: Yungblud - Idols

Guy Oddy

Dominic Harrison’s latest disc fails to live up to the hype

Patrick Wolf, Rough Trade East review - the Kent-based bard refashions his new album ‘Crying the Neck’

Kieron Tyler

Despite its record shop setting, this magnetic performance is a show as such

Footnote: a brief history of new music in Britain

New music has swung fruitfully between US and UK influences for half a century. The British charts began in 1952, initially populated by crooners and light jazz. American rock'n'roll livened things up, followed by British imitators such as Lonnie Donegan and Cliff Richard. However, it wasn't until The Beatles combined rock'n'roll's energy with folk melodies and Motown sweetness that British pop found a modern identity outside light entertainment. The Rolling Stones, amping up US blues, weren't far behind, with The Who and The Kinks also adding a unique Englishness. In the mid-Sixties the drugs hit - LSD sent pop looking for meaning. Pastoral psychedelia bloomed. Such utopianism couldn't last and prog rock alongside Led Zeppelin's steroid riffing defined the early Seventies. Those who wanted it less blokey turned to glam, from T Rex to androgynous alien David Bowie.

sex_pistolsA sea change arrived with punk and its totemic band, The Sex Pistols, a reaction to pop's blandness and much else. Punk encouraged inventiveness and imagination on the cheap but, while reggae made inroads, the most notable beneficiary was synth pop, The Human League et al. This, when combined with glam styling, produced the New Romantic scene and bands such as Duran Duran sold multi-millions and conquered the US.

By the mid-Eighties, despite U2's rise, the British charts were sterile until acid house/ rave culture kicked the doors down for electronica, launching acts such as the Chemical Brothers. The media, however, latched onto indie bands with big tunes and bigger mouths, notably Oasis and Blur – Britpop was born.

By the millennium, both scenes had fizzled, replaced by level-headed pop-rockers who abhorred ostentation in favour of homogenous emotionality. Coldplay were the biggest. Big news, however, lurked in underground UK hip hop where artists adapted styles such as grime, dubstep and drum & bass into new pop forms, creating breakout stars Dizzee Rascal and, more recently, Tinie Tempah. The Arts Desk's wide-ranging new music critics bring you overnight reviews of every kind of music, from pop to unusual world sounds, daily reviews of new releases and downloads, and unique in-depth interviews with celebrated musicians and DJs, plus the quickest ticket booking links. Our writers include Peter Culshaw, Joe Muggs, Howard Male, Thomas H Green, Graeme Thomson, Kieron Tyler, Russ Coffey, Bruce Dessau, David Cheal & Peter Quinn

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