New music
Guy Oddy
Let’s Rock is a return to action after a five-year break by blues-rock duo the Black Keys and, given their track record of raw musical swagger on such great discs as Attack and Release and Brothers, it’s one that comes as a bit of a surprise. Largely gone are the grubby blues licks that the Akron duo used to whip up at will and, in their place, is a slick sound that feels uncomfortably close to the bombastic background music used in Eighties TV series Miami Vice.This new direction is particularly evident on “Get Yourself Together” which sounds like something Don Henley might have put out in Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
With her timeless vocals and jazz-inflected folk melodies, it feels like a bit of Los Angeles songwriter Bedouine lives in the golden age of Hollywood. It’s a dichotomy she goes as far as to address on “Echo Park”, a woozy Sunday morning wander through one of the city’s more bohemian neighbourhoods whose melody - and observationally poetic lyrics - draw from the Joni Mitchell playbook. “I’ll stay as long as I don’t tire from the rising cost of coffee,” she confesses. “The skyline’s inching higher, but the sights are free.”Born in Aleppo, Syria, Azniv Korkejian has been a US resident since her Read more ...
theartsdesk
Download is Britain’s premier metal festival, attended by all ages. Theartsdesk’s three person team offer up their reviews of one day each, as they navigated their way between Eighties hair metal, contemporary Viking metal and any other metal you might care to imagine…Friday 14th JuneBy Ellie PorterPictured above: Rob Zombie headlining the Zippo Encore Stage © Matt EachusWell, last year’s uncharacteristically glorious sunshine seemed too good to be true – and it was: normal service resumes this year at Download. Heavy rain in the week before the festival has resulted in glutinous ground and Read more ...
peter.quinn
Camden’s Jazz Cafe reverberated to the sounds of a 50-year-old spiritual jazz classic last night, as saxist and MC Soweto Kinch and his quintet paid fulsome homage to NEA Jazz Master Pharoah Sanders’ consciousness-expanding album, Karma.Recorded in New York City over two days in February 1969, the album line-up was one of Sanders' finest, including vocalist and lyricist Leon Thomas, pianist Lonnie Liston Smith and bassist Richard Davis, who had performed on a similarly genre-defying masterpiece, Astral Weeks, the year before. The seismic collision of jazz and world music heard in Karma is Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Milton Nascimento is 76. Physically, he is quite frail; he had to be helped carefully onto the stage and then up into a high stool for this London concert by a couple of band members. But that arrival and rather ungainly progress were, as one might expect, given a welcome befitting this hero of the Brazilian musical world. The completely full Barbican Hall was willing him on.This was one of those nights where the non-Brazilian listener is definitely missing out. One can feel the palpable sense of connection, the sheer warmth and adulation from the besotted audience. People are joining in more Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Nineteen years, seven albums and untold side projects into their career, Hot Chip have for the first time enlisted outside producers: Rodaidh McDonald and French disco/house don Philippe Zdar. And it's worked. Over the course of the previous albums, the band had steadily evolved from ramshackle and rather self-consciously quirky writers and players to a far slicker operation. Notably this was informed by Alexis Taylor's broadening as a songwriter through various experiments and collaborations, and Joe Goddard's deep immersion in bittersweet deep house music, both solo and in 2 Bears – but the Read more ...
Owen Richards
Producer extraordinaire Mark Ronson has set his sights on soundtracking the summer once again, with his latest collaborative collection of pop gems. It's a seductive album, packed with enough hooks to conquer the charts for the next few months.The lead singles set the tone for the album's raison d'être: bittersweet pop. "Nothing Breaks Like a Heart" with Miley Cyrus is an immediate standout dancefloor filler, country sensibilities thrown through nightclub drama. The Lykke Li-led "Late Night Feelings" doubles down on this mood, evoking a night time drive through Miami. Its magic lies in a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 was issued by Warner Bros. in October 2003. Hitting shops in time for Christmas, it mixed hits like “Everybody Hurts”, “Man on the Moon” and “Orange Crush” with album and soundtrack cuts, and a couple of previously unissued tracks. Released as an 18-track CD, it was initially issued as double-disc set with the additional material drawn from B-sides, more film soundtracks and live performances. There was also a Europe-only double-album version featuring the core 18 tracks.That vinyl version has sold for between £40 and £220. At the time of writing, copies Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Willie’s new album opens with the singer calling out to all the tired old horses saved from the knackers and put out to pasture. It’s not just something he does in song, but in life. It’s co-written with Sonny Throckmorton, an old mucker of the Zen cowboy who lives next to Nelson’s Luck studio in Texas – and next door, too, to the stud of 60 or so retired horses saved by Nelson from the slaughterhouse and given a retirement home on his ranch. It’s hard not to love a man for that kind of act of kindness to the world’s beasts of burden, and the song’s a good-un, too, sweet, tender, and direct. Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
They showed up with a 30+ song setlist, four costume changes and a floating platform, but the strongest moment of the Backstreet Boys’ tour was when they dispensed with all of that for an a cappella version of “Breathe”, from new album DNA.“Like we used to do it,” Howie Dorough explained. “Not a lot of people know we started out as an a cappella group.”More than a quarter of a century after their formation in Orlando, Florida, the Backstreet Boys’ live show draws more from their recent two-year Las Vegas residency than doo-wop or harmonies. Unlike contemporaries such as Take That who, a Read more ...
Katie Colombus
In a post Ed Sheeran world, with a glut of acoustic singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi, Tom Walker or Odell, James Bay, Jack Savoretti – all of whom are big on poignantly penned balladry, phonic flair and harmonious melody – is there room for another young male artist to make waves in the indi-folk arena?Spotify seems to think so – 6 million streams and counting of singles from Charlie Cunningham’s recently released second album Permanent Way (and 165 million for his first album Lines in 2017) would indicate something special about his particular sonic concept.There’s certainly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If contemplated without a context, Loops in the Secret Society initially appears to be a bold 68-minute, double-album fusion of Hawkwind’s hum and whir, Krautrock insistence, spacey electronica and folky otherness. Jane Weaver’s voice is disembodied, as if in a trance. As one track bleeds into another, ambient linking pieces instil the feeling this is more a lengthy mood piece rather than a series of individual compositions. If the soundtrack were needed to a flickering silent film about artificial creatures escaping from underworld bondage and emerging into the daylight, this is it.However, Read more ...