New music
Katie Colombus
A lost weekend is time you can't account for: you come out of it changed, unsure quite how. Phoebe Bridgers, it seems, has been living inside one. Six years after Punisher, she returns not with interviews but phone-free pop-up shows for $20, and an album that drifts further out than anything she's done before: sixteen songs about losing her father, ending a relationship and falling headlong in love."The Outside" opens muffled and distorted, Bridgers' delicate voice melting through the static as she watches someone "get carried away", frozen in place but not afraid. It is an introduction to an Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Like electronica, metal is an umbrella term that contains multitudes of micro-genres. How do you fancy sludge, blackened crust or funeral doom? And that’s just scraping the surface. One of the more common ones is metalcore, a portmanteau word for the heaviest metal crashing into hardcore punk. A rising band in this category is São Paulo’s AXTY whose fourth album is as inventive as it is apoplectic.They’re a three-piece, with frontman Felipe Martins delivering hacksaw-throated, gurgle-growled lyrics. There’s also drummer Gabriel Marques and guitarist Jonathas Xavier, and one of them Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Just over 24 hours before Idlewild stepped out at the Kelvingrove Bandstand, the much ballyhooed solar eclipse had proved a damp squib for much of Scotland, with cloudy weather obscuring any views. With inevitable irony, the following day brought clear skies and sunshine, meaning the audience for this outdoor Glasgow show were basking in brightness and warmth for the arrival of Roddy Woomble and company, a band now holding indie veteran status.Sadly the good weather did not massively help support act Sorren Maclean, a well kent face in Scottish music. His low-key set, built around trad Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Adverts’ debut single was released by Stiff Records in late April 1977. The top side of the “One Chord Wonders” / “Quick Step” pairing was a dry humoured assessment of the state of play in British punk. It was and is a remarkable record.However, reviews back then were mixed. NME’s Tony Parsons said it was “mundane rock by new wave flotsam and jetsam” and that The Adverts are “almost unbelievably boring.” In contrast, Sounds rated it as Single Of The Week and said “If [singer] TV Smith can keep writing songs like this, The Adverts will be up there with them.” Prescient. Their next single, Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Unlike in Britain, where the bar for entry is more survival than talent, “national treasure” is not a term in such wide currency in America. But Mavis Staples is indeed a National Treasure – rather, an International Treasure – writ large. Younger readers who were mesmerised by Timothy Chalamet playing Bob Dylan and who then asked on social media “what did Joan Baez and Pete Seeger do after A Complete Unknown?” (yes, really) may recall a scene early in that movie where “the unwashed phenomenon” (as Baez would later describe him) plays a hootenanny at Riverside Church. There he meets not Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It’s easy to miss what an interesting artist Carly Simon is. I’ve certainly been guilty of it; bar a few undeniable gems, it felt like her oeuvre was based in a 1970s white rock music retreat from the innovations of the previous decade – a footnote to The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Elton John’s mega-big building of a new conventionality. It didn’t help that contemporary reviews or cultural commentary tended to mention her almost entirely in gossipy terms about her glamour and social / romantic life – essentially through a prism of her relationship to famous men. As such I ignored her later Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Temple Songs opens with “Arc Still Bends”. The song begins with filigreed acoustic guitar and Laura Veirs singing “the arc still bends towards justice, right?” “So why I am still holding this fucking sign,” she continues. It’s not hard to get where this is coming from. Atmospherically, what’s conjured suggests the glacial shimmer of Linda Perhacs. As the album beds in, a Joni Mitchell-evoking jazziness is apparent. A recurrent cross talk between Veirs’ lead voice and her dubbed-in backing vocals is another Perhacs-like quality. Lyrics are questioning, asking to be accepted at face value Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Tread softly into Jon Batiste’s third volume of his Piano Series, Monk Meditations, drawing on and drawing out a number of introspective solo piano pieces inspired and adapted from Thelonius Monk. It’s one of two Monk-based sets (Monk Movements is its twin) that land on the same day along with a second volume of Black Mozart – August 14. While Movements sees Monk classics, such as the title track of his 1967 album Brilliant Corners, transform into classical piano suites, Batiste’s aim on Meditations is to erase barriers between jazz, blues and classical by embracing a minimalist, ambient New Read more ...
Joe Muggs
On first impressions, London vocal trio FLO’s music can seem very familiar. Their sound has always been that of American R&B rooted heavily in the 00s – before EDM throb and then hazy, narcotic atmospheres started to dominate it – with vocal acrobatics and rich harmonies front and centre. And the lyrics very much have the preoccupations of that era: luxury, self-confidence, a lot of sex, and “popping bottles in the club”. On their second album, though, the closer you listen, the more you realise that there are some extremely interesting things going on the lyrics, which drip with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the sound quality is slightly boxy, the opening track on CBGB’s 1985 is a treat. “Gardens” is on a line between first-album Rain Parade and Unhalfbricking-era Fairport Convention, it’s hard to tell from this live album whether Rochester, New York’s Absolute Grey – grey, not gray – caught the attention of their subdued-seeming Manhattan audience four decades ago while playing NYC’s prime roots-level venue. Now, though, it’s clear “Gardens” is top-drawer folk rock-inclined psychedelia which demands instant attention.When a studio version of “Gardens” – recorded in July 1985 – was Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Comparatively speaking, Rotherham appears in the news more than most British towns of an equivalent size. And much of that news is not good. Much of it is representative of poverty, social disenfranchisement, and the ugly face of flag-waving Britain. But self-released, 2020s grass roots indie rockers The Reytons offer a reminder of working class community power, a band who hark back to the days when the only way out of big city estates was through football and pop.Their last couple of albums (of four, including this one), made it to No.1 and No.2 in the UK album charts, respectively. This Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Last night's BBC Prom was a celebration – of 40 years since the release of Paul Simon’s triumphant album Graceland in August 1986. Before long, the celebration had morphed into a dance-along, with the fully populated arena of the Royal Albert Hall bobbing and swaying, spurred into movement by the stylish choreography of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. And by the time we got to the final number in the programme, “You Can Call Me Al”, the dance-along had blossomed further into a joyous sing-along. Like all good celebrations, the reasons why or how it’s actually happening can get lost in the Read more ...