New music
Guy Oddy
Ripples may be Ian Brown’s first album in nine years but it gives absolutely no impression of a man grasping at straws to resurrect his career after the non-event that was the Stone Roses’ 2011 reunion. Baggy grooves, dancehall reggae vibes and socially conscious lyrics mark King Monkey’s latest solo set, all delivered with characteristic swagger. In fact, such is Brown’s confidence that he hasn’t just sung on Ripples but produced, created the artwork, played guitar, drums and various other instruments, and pulled in his sons to contribute both their musical and song-writing talents.Lead Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Last spring, Imagining Ireland took a fresh, shamrock-free look at contemporary Ireland’s cultural scene, with spoken word and alt-folk mixing with indie rock and jazz, classical, gospel and rap, with the line-up led by Bell X1’s Paul Noonan and Lisa Hannigan.One year on, and Imagining Ireland returns, but with a new brief – to examine the Irish life in England – and a new line-up. And for contemporary Irish folk fans, this line-up will be your ticket to heaven – led by The Gloaming’s genius fiddler Martin Hayes and sean nos singer Iarla O'Lionaird, alongside two of the best younger singers Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Specials were era-defining, making this a hugely anticipated album for many. On paper they’ve released a bunch of albums since the Eighties but their discography is misleading. Encore is their first major work in decades. It’s a big ask for it to match their iconic status, akin to when The Stooges and Kraftwerk reappeared with new music decades after their legendary prime. It succeeds in places but does not – and, of course, never could – match the impact of their early work.On their first two albums The Specials brilliantly embodied the unfettered possibility of a vital and uniquely Read more ...
The Dandy Warhols, O2 Institute, Birmingham review - a silver jubilee jaunt with plenty of new tunes
Guy Oddy
This week, the Dandy Warhols rocked up in Birmingham to begin the UK leg of their 25th anniversary tour with a gig in the Institute’s shabby but beautiful main hall, with its dusty neo-classical alabaster reliefs and almost comically antiquated balconies. It was indeed the perfect venue for a band that have spent so many years taking the psychedelic and adding their own twist to create something fine but far from mainstream. Needless to the say, the almost capacity audience lapped it all up, even though not too many seemed to have come out on this cold winter night with the intention of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Japanese band MONO have been around for 20 years, inhabiting a musical landscape that straddles post-rock and contemporary classical sounds. Not ones to let things go stale, however, their 10th album not only sees the debut appearance of drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla, but also brings some new elements to their signature sound.In particular, Nowhere Now Here adds washes of electronics throughout MONO’s deliberate and studied tones, while bass and keyboard player Tamaki Kunishi also brings her Nico-like vocals to the band for the first time on the maudlin ballad, “Breathe”. That’s not to say that Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Few bands have grown up in real time in quite as interesting a way as Girlpool. It’s partly a question of timing: Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker were barely old enough to play bars around the release of their precocious 2013 debut EP, with its sing-song harmonies and cover like a child’s painting. And it’s partly a reflection of how their musical world has expanded with each release, each new album showing off a fuller sound yet still perfectly reflecting the internal and external chaos of figuring out your place in a confusing world as a young adult.This evolution has never been more Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A compilation on which Philip Glass and Terry Riley rub shoulders with Controlled Bleeding and Smegma is going to be interesting. Throw in Data-Bank-A, Dog as Master, NON and Suicide, and it becomes clear what’s striven for is an all-encompassing overview of something particular rather than a miscellany of random names included as attention-grabbers.Over its four CDs, Third Noise Principle explores the world described by its lengthy sub-title as Formative North American Electronica 1975–1984, Excursions in Proto Synth pop, DIY Techno, Noise & Ambient Exploration. It’s the follow-up to Read more ...
Jo Southerd
In 2016, Sharon Van Etten took a hiatus from music, and threw herself into other projects. She got her first acting role in Netflix drama The OA and, inspired by the intense emotional connection her fans had found with her songs, began studying to become a mental health counsellor. She also found out that she was pregnant. Of course, before long, music found a way of creeping back in; her performance in David Lynch’s 2017 revival of Twin Peaks took her music back onstage, and the process of penning her first film score took Van Etten back to the studio. It was here, working on the score for Read more ...
Ellie Porter
“Don’t love me yet,” replies Patti Smith to the first of tonight’s many excitable shout-outs. “Who knows, after 20 minutes you might be gone!” An unlikely scenario, given that this show – part of the Roundhouse’s annual “In the Round” series, which also features Ronnie Spector and Shirley Collins – sold out in nanoseconds and is packed with rapt fans. It’s billed as “An Evening of Words and Music”, but if you’ve ever seen Patti Smith before you’ll know that this combination is pretty much a given (I don’t think I’ll ever forget Smith's furious performance of Allen Ginsberg's “Footnote to Howl Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“I want to be a man without any past,” said Michel Legrand, who has died at the age of 86. He had perhaps the longest past in showbiz. Orchestrator, pianist, conductor, composer of countless soundtracks, who else has collaborated as widely - with Miles Davis and Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbra Streisand and Jean-Luc Godard, Gene Kelly, Joseph Losey and Edith Piaf? When I visited him at his house at his splendid classical manoir 100km south of Paris, on the mantelpiece in the large white sitting room four familiar gilt statuettes stood sentry. The oldest was for “Windmills of My Mind”, the best Read more ...
Katie Colombus
There is an inevitable change that comes with moving from the realms of self-produced bedroom blubstep to slickly-produced West Cali smoothness that will cause chaotic realms of loss of self, fans and at some level, originality. But let’s not forget – this is surely what Blake has always been aiming for. Yes, Assume Form has a degree of soullessness that is a stark contrast to his self-titled first album – but that’s part of the journey from angsty, bleak, indie-dubstep to successful, Mercury Prize-winning musician.The level of collaboration on this album (Metro Boomin, Travis Scott, Moses Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When Shirley Collins appears at The Roundhouse next week, it will be 50 years since she last played there. On 30 May 1969, she and her sister Dolly were on a bill promoting their then label Harvest Records. When she plays there on 31 January, she is the main event. After her comeback album Lodestar was issued in November 2016, the knowledge that Shirley is the most important voice of traditional English music has been reinforced.Lodestar was released 37 years after her last full-length album, 1979’s Shirley & Dolly Collins set For as Many as Will. The – as she puts it – “long layoff Read more ...