rock
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Violent Femmes might be one of America’s most distinctive-sounding bands. There’s no mistaking the combination of Gordon Gano’s laconic, speak-sung vocals and Brian Ritchie’s bass that has been at the heart of the band since the early 80s. On Hotel Last Resort, the band’s 10th album (and second since their 2013 comeback), they play with many sounds: comic slacker rock, blunted bossa nova, high-profile guest spot showcase, deadbeat lullaby, demented barbershop. But there’s no point at which it doesn’t sound like the Violent Femmes.The album finds the band - now a four-piece following the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“As much as I love New York City, it’s all too obvious that Cleveland is about to become the musical focal point that the Big Apple has been on and off since the beginning of the century,” wrote Peter Laughner in October 1974. “I want to do what Brian Wilson did for California and Lou Reed did for New York.” To a degree, the new five-album/five-CD set Peter Laughner achieves this, albeit 42 years after his death.Laughner’s full-page article in Cleveland newspaper The Plain Dealer pointed to the north-east Ohio city’s 15-60-75, Jimmy Ley and Mirrors as the bands who would represent this Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Thirty-three years ago, at Manchester's Festival of the Tenth Summer, I fumed that New Order had been given top billing over The Smiths, much to the mirth of a couple of reviewers of this very parish. History has proved me wrong, obviously. So, to Italy, and a modest-sized and relatively modern piazza (Napoleonic) in beguiling, ancient Lucca. To see two of Manchester’s most revered bands. This time I don’t have to choose sides.It couldn’t be further from Salford, Macclesfield and Bury in every sense. A balmy evening breeze rustles through the leaves and brings welcome relief from the day Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The first thing you notice when listening to the debut album from Austrian duo Molly (Lars Andersson and Phillip Dornauer) is that it is a collection lit with the glow of confidence. Introducing themselves with a delicately paced 15-minute Mogadon-prog epic denotes a certain slow-burning swagger, but it is surrounded by a sense of grandeur rather than the grandiose. Grandeur is an important theme here, musically at least. Informed as much by their local geography (the Austrian Alps) as the bands they will inevitably be compared to (Sigur Rós, Galaxie 500, Dungen), this is music with a Read more ...
Owen Richards
Among the summer gigs being held in Caerphilly this summer, it seemed a tall order for electronic/math rock instrumentalists Public Service Broadcasting to pack out a castle. They may be more current, but the others (The Stranglers, Groove Armada, The Zutons et al) at least had notable commercial periods. PSB’s biggest singles have never troubled the UK Top 75. And though a £40 ticket price on the door seemed optimistic, the castle’s savvy booking became clear as we passed through those ancient gates. A large courtyard, very much packed.After three albums and several EPs, PSB have crafted Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“When I was a small boy growing up in the south of England,” says Frank Turner - pausing just long enough for the anticipated good-natured jeering from the Scottish crowd - “I dreamed of playing the legendary King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.”It may sound disingenuous - it’s certainly not the first time that Turner, who barely six months ago sold almost 10 times as many tickets to sell out Glasgow’s O2 Academy, has played the city’s most storied venue - but the hollers in response are of a crowd who are in on the joke. This hastily-arranged stop filling in for a cancelled festival date is a rare chance Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Day two of the seventh BST Hyde Park concert series, and despite darkening skies the rain held off until the last hour or so, at which point anything else would have seemed inappropriate – for Stevie Wonder was about to tell us that in September he is to have a kidney transplant. He had a donor, he would be fine, he told everyone – but there was a collective sense that we all wanted to call to say we loved him, this wonderful musician who has been with us since he was 11-year-old Little Stevie Wonder. Which is to say pretty much all our lives.Deprived of sight, Wonder is prodigiously gifted, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
There can’t be many bands who have been around (on and off) for almost 40 years and who choose to play the whole of their latest album as their live set. That kind of thing is more often reserved for 10- or 20-year anniversary tours. No one could accuse Al Jourgensen and Ministry (or any of his many bands, for that matter) from having ever taken the easy route at any point in their career though. Fortunately for a heaving O2 Institute, Uncle Al is still not playing “the game” today.To celebrate this year’s Fourth of July, Ministry played two sets on the Birmingham leg of their first UK tour Read more ...
caspar.gomez
As ever theartsdesk’s Glastonbury report arrives after all other media coverage. Despite management pressure Caspar Gomez refuses earlier deadlines. He told Editorial, “The press tent is like an office, a place of work, full of laptops and coffee. Who needs that?” His annual saga doesn’t attempt to compete with Tweeted micro-reviews or ever-available BBC iPlayer festival highlights. It takes a winding road, explores the scenery, the musical-chemical highs and body-worn lows, capturing in fuller form than anywhere else a most singular plunge into Glastonbury 2019.THURSDAY 27th JUNEIt’s been Read more ...
Owen Richards
With the fabled fields of Glastonbury on the horizon, The Killers chose the equally mythic Cardiff Castle as their practice run. While Stormzy was making history on the Pyramid Stage, the Welsh capital played witness to a precision-engineered pop-rock spectacular, complete with pyros and an extravagant light show. Well, if you can’t make history, make memories.They began big with a one-two punch of first-album bangers. “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” led straight into “Mr Brightside”, a power play to drop their generational lads anthem so early, but it mainlined adrenaline straight through the Read more ...
Barney Harsent
On his last album, 2017’s acclaimed The Possum in the Driveway, singer-songwriter Mark Mulcahy presented a collection that seemed almost anthological – a series of vignettes each with a strong sense of individual identity, sewn together in a pin-perfect patchwork by Mulcahy’s distinctive tones. With The Gus, Mulcahy has taken his narrative approach forward, apparently inspired by the short stories of American writer George Saunders. His renewed focus lends a sharp sense of authorial voice to the album and the result is a more contained and structured piece. Mulcahy’s success Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
So theartsdesk on Vinyl reaches its 50th edition. That’s at least a novels’ worth of words. Maybe two! But we’re not stopping yet. The heat of the summer has arrived but the vinyl deluge hasn’t dried up, so check in for everything from Germanic electro to Scottish Seventies pop-rock to Japanese minyo music reimagined. And much more. All vinyl life is here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHQuantic Atlantic Oscillations (Tru Thoughts)Will Holland – Quantic – has spent the past few years successfully indulging in his penchant for South American, living there and recording a multiplicity of releases Read more ...