New music
Thomas H. Green
It’s not every artist who performs “living funerals” along the way as she tours. Then again, American singer Emily Cross is far from the average rocker. Cross Record was previously Cross and her husband Dan Duszynski, who were also both in the slowcore indie “supergroup” Loma. However, this third Cross Record album was made solo, after a move to Mexico following her divorce, also alongside newfound sobriety. It is a more direct, thoughtful creature than its predecessors, yet musically even more floaty and spectral.The default setting for the album is hazy tone music speckled with twinkling Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The sound of Blood Year is mesmerising, yet also brutal, like a vast sonic ocean it explodes with relentless violence and then ebbs back to meander in the musical shallows, with soft melodic passages, before picking up the pace and again throwing caution to the winds.Over 15 years and six albums, experimental three-piece, Russian Circles have had a similar approach to instrumental music as post-rockers Mogwai, but one less cinematic in tone. For their latest opus, however, Mike Sullivan, Dave Turncrantz and Brian Cook have turned up the volume to 11 in the places where it counts. Despite Read more ...
joe.muggs
You can see why of all jazz acts, the indie-centric Domino label went for this one. In particular if you took the drums and guitar of Lizy Exell and Shirley Tetteh alone, at various points here you could be listening to post-rock, with hints of Sigur Rós or God Speed You! Black Emperor especially on the album's epic centrepiece “EU (Emotionally Unavailable)”.The production, too – from Kwes (Solange, Damon Albarn, Micachu) – is as hefty and sometimes experimental as you'd expect from a left of centre rock or electronica act. But crucially, these parts are just aspects of a larger whole. Once Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Music can rile in a way that other artistic forms tend not to. It’s perfectly possible for people to take a dislike to someone they’ve never met based on no more than a Spotify playlist. Take any successful band and you’re guaranteed to find people who despise them for the heinous crime of making pop music that they don’t much care for. Kaiser Chiefs are one such band and the ire they draw from some quarters intensified after frontman Ricky Wilson’s tenure on TV talent show The Voice. All of a sudden indie credibility – whatever that is – was out of the window and he was Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As this month’s edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl appears the sun is blazing outside, a heatwave hits, and our record collections must hide in the shadows or warp. Yet still we want more to join them in their sheltered rows and where better to seek the greatest new releases than the longest, most complete monthly round-up of new vinyl releases. As ever, we run the gamut. This time there’s everything from grunge to soul to trap to Qawwali and a whole lot more most of us never imagined could exist. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHQasim Naqvi Teenages (Erased Tapes)Teenages, latest album from New York Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Friday 19 July2019 is a big deal in the Supersonic universe, as it marks the fifteenth time that the Festival has been held in Birmingham – the Home of Metal. So, what better way to celebrate than to kick things off with a double header at the City’s iconic Town Hall venue and what better bands to do the honours than local lads, Godflesh and US noise veterans, Neurosis?Despite being July, Birmingham was distinctly soggy as fans queued to get into Town Hall, and not one for acting like a star, Godflesh’s Justin Broadrick hit the stage in an anorak and rucksack with sodden hair. Initially, the Read more ...
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 ...
Sebastian Scotney
Josh Ritter is in his early forties. He has a two-decade career with 10 studio albums (and, incidentally, a First World War novel) to his name. He has come a long way from trying out open mic nights in Providence, Rhode Island. His albums now regularly make it into the upper reaches of the US folk charts. But he still exudes a boyish charm, a winning and willing smile and obvious enthusiasm for live performing.He now has a substantial songbook and last night, the first of two at Union Chapel, he gave a good selection, some solo with fast fingerstyle guitar, most of them with his regular band Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Finding snapshots to characterise Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign and its aftermath is a tall order. There are so many, and assembling them could result in a wearying cavalcade of the all-too familiar. Whether in book form – such as Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury – or film – say, the new Steve Bannon documentary The Brink – the net result is largely to validate existing viewpoints. Such well-trodden ground begs for new approaches.With the Trump-themed 45, Field Music’s David Brewis reassumes the School of Language persona he last adopted in 2014. Over 10 tracks and 33 minutes, he has 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 ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If there was a downer during the giddy, gleeful Glasgow stop of Gossip’s recent run of shows, it was only when front woman Beth Ditto introduced the band as being “not really together but we’re here”. The dance-punk trio - joined, for this short run of reunion shows, by pre-split touring members Chris Sutton on bass and Gregg Foreman on keyboards - were made to front sweaty rooms, with Ditto in particular a gleaming vision in a sleek black wig and metallic pink dress.The occasion may have been the 10th anniversary of the band’s Rick Rubin-produced 2009 album, Music For Men - hence the huge Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The first thing you notice about Guesswork is the sound. Or rather, what's missing: there are none of the usual jangly guitars. No trusty Rickenbackers. Instead, the singer-songwriter offers up a palette of synthesisers and drum machines. For those who grew up listening to his Eighties' classic, Rattlesnakes, it can be a little disorientating.Scratch beneath the surface, though, and things really aren't so different. Cole's cracked voice is still gloriously soulful and his words continue to ruminate on life's unfolding saga. Unsurprisingly now, at 58, the story has moved on. Read more ...