new music reviews
Robert Beale

Is Artificial Intelligence pointing the way to musical composition in the future? The BBC Philharmonic, conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni and colleagues at the Royal Northern College of Music made a case for it in this concert.

Kieron Tyler

 “You Turned my Bitter Into Sweet” sounds like a hit. The 1965 Mary Love single was issued by the Los Angeles-based Kent label and had a Motown flavour and a hint of The Supremes’s “Come See About me”, from the previous year. “You Turned my Bitter Into Sweet” was a killer 45.

Kieron Tyler

There’s a song by Kevin Ayers called “The Lady Rachel”. It was on his 1969 debut solo LP Joy Of A Toy. Play it alongside “This Still Life”, the second track on the second album from Ireland’s Aoife Nessa Frances and the aesthetic kinship is clear. The differing genders of the singer-composers aside, one could swap with the other and snugly fit onto either release.

Kieron Tyler

In the third week of April 1967, Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Somethin’ Stupid” topped the UK’s single’s chart. Sandie Shaw’s “Puppet on a String” was number two, and The Monkees’ “A Little Bit me a Little Bit You” snapped at her heels. Englebert Humperdinck’s recent number one “Release me” was at number five. All very pop, very mainstream.

Tim Cumming

It’s the second night of a four-night run at the London Palladium of the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Tour – no other Dylan jaunt has taken an album for its title – and it begins with a blast of symphonic violence from the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. The house lights fade to black, the symphony segues into a modal tune-up on stage, Dylan and his four-piece – second guitarist Bob Britt is not here tonight – barely visible in silhouette.

Thomas H. Green

At the start of the song “Two Ribbons” Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth of Let’s Eat Grandma do a brief schoolyard pat-a-cake hand-game. The song is a guileless ode to female friendship, love even, a paean to their own bond, which was strained at one point by the travails of a music career.

Guy Oddy

Ten minutes before The Orb got on stage at the Hare & Hounds, Alex Paterson was standing in the building’s courtyard with a big old spliff in his hand “clearing his head” and getting ready for action. So, it was good to know that some things don’t change.

Liz Thomson

Among those making her Cambridge Folk Festival on the diminutive Club Stage back in the summer was Angeline Morrison, a Birmingham-born singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who these days makes her home in Cornwall, drawn at least in part by its folk music. Her short solo performance was noteworthy, and earlier this month it was announced that Morrison has been awarded the Christian Raphael Prize 2022, presented in association with the Festival.

Guy Oddy

Folk music? It’s all old blokes in shapeless clothes wailing on about ploughmen and fishermen, isn’t it?

Jonathan Geddes

Rarely will the bar staff at the Glasgow Barrowland have had an easier night. The crowd for Beabadoobee was so youthful that the vibe felt more like a school disco at times, right down to clusters of parents at the back and on the sidelines alternating between keeping a wary eye on proceedings and burying themselves in their phones. Their offspring, meanwhile, were racing to the front eagerly, leaving the usually busy bar areas deserted.