New music
Kieron Tyler
The tapes from which Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions is sourced were found in a suitcase Eric Dolphy had given to musical polymath Hale Smith and his wife Juanita before setting off on a European tour in 1964. What was handed over by the prodigious multi-instrumentalist for safekeeping has never before been fully explored by an archive release. Dolphy did not return from that tour. He died on 29 June 1964 in Berlin from the untreated effects of diabetes.Musical Prophet, then, is freighted with meaning. It represents a series of recordings which were important to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Their music is a bit wizard-y. It’s certainly imbued with a pungent sense of mammoth weed. And the “bastard” is surely for the sheer, meaty rock’n’roll heft of the word (much as Motörhead used it to title an album). But don’t be fooled. Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard are not a passing indie-punk turn with a novelty name in the vein of, say, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin or Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. Their new album carries serious weight. It’s heavy as osmium.Fans of this quartet from Wrexham, Wales, will observe that Yn Ol I Annwn (Return to the Underworld in Welsh) isn’t as heavy as their previous Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It's 18 years since the last Royal Trux album, but it might just as well be 18 months, so easily have they slipped back into their sound. OK, Neil Hegarty and Jennifer Herera have been gigging together again on and off since 2015, but even so it's quite astonishing how natural this record sounds. But then again, the Royal Trux sound was always something that sounded more like a channelling of something elemental than anything composed or contrived.As ever, the fundamentals of sleaze rock are here: lashings of Velvets and 1970s Stones, the “no wave” sound of New York, a little bit of Cramps Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Joshua Redman's Still Dreaming Quartet is a project surrounded by an abundance of facts, context and backstories. Jazz folk really like that stuff. If fans can’t get enough of all the interconnections and the minutiae, the truth is that a concert stands or falls by what actually happens in the moment, whether it actually works or doesn't. And in this Barbican set, the first of a short European tour, Redman, cornetist Ron Miles, bassist Scott Colley and Brian Blade at the drums really did deliver. These are four players whose immediacy of response, virtuosity, ability to raise the temperature Read more ...
Mark Kidel
John Mayall is not just the dean of British blues fans, but he has done as much for the genre as anyone else around, from his early promotion of stars such as Eric Clapton and Mick Taylor through to his continuing devotion to the purest form of the genre.His latest album features lead guitar by Joe Bonamassa, Larry McCray, Alex Lifeson, Todd Rungren, Steve Van Zandt and Carolyn Wonderland. They are all very good at churning out the licks with virtuosity and feeling, and rising above the standard-form blues solo, as Carolyn Wonderland does with her slide on “Distant Lonesome Train”. Mayall is Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Back in 2017, The Foo Fighters did a surprise pre-Glastonbury gig at Frome’s Cheese & Grain, a rather soulless shed near the equally soulless Westway Shopping Centre. So much for Frome being the heart of a new alternative Britain, almost a parallel universe with the only state-funded Steiner school in the country. The all-purpose venue is better known for programming a string of covers bands, the bi-monthly Vegan Market and the Seed Swap and Potato Day. The place was packed on Sunday night for a gig by Lau, the much-touted avant-folk band from Scotland.Kris Drever (guitar and vocals), Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Lyrics such as “are we hunting for life among misery, Satan have pity on my long distress” and “we’re on a ship of fools, sails laughing and singing to hell” telegraph that, as a commentary on the present, Garden of Earthly Delights isn’t painting a rosy picture. The narrator of the title track, which opens the album, lives next door to the garden, climbs its fence and describes what’s encountered within: a devil offers money in exchange for a good time and ecstasy is achievable only by following the Goddess of Darkness.Norway’s Susanna Wallumrød is not the first musician to co-opt the Read more ...
Owen Richards
Compared to Scotland, Welsh independence has yet to hit the mainstream. The idea has been mostly supported by the Welsh-speaking population, with opinion polls hovering around 19 per cent. It’s fallen to Super Furry Animals keyboardist Cian Ciaran to change this with the Yes is More campaign. On Friday night, Cardiff’s Tramshed played host to a mini festival of music, food and discussion, with the aim to engage the public in its political and social future.As line-ups go, it was a hell of a launch event. Mainstream appeal was clearly the target, with self-proclaimed “prosecco socialist/dank Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Beth Jeans Houghton’s world seems to have been characterised by an over-supply of half-empty, small glasses of late – especially when it comes to romantic relationships with men. That’s not to say that she’s completely given up on half the globe’s population though, as she grudgingly admits that she’d “rather have a man than a coffee machine” on “Coffee Machine”. Nevertheless, there’s not much to suggest in the lyrics of Lung Bread for Daddy that she feels ready to make peace with that end of the human race, even making enough space among her feckless exes to give everyone’s favourite target Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Full marks for shoehorning-in the names of city’s two major football teams into the title of Manchester - A City United In Music. But this spiffy double-CD compendium roams further than the boundaries of the titular metropolis. Leigh, Salford, Stockport, Timperley and Warrington are in the mix too. “Manchester-area” or “Manchester-region” wouldn’t be such snappy designations but the point is made – Manchester is suffused in music.The period covered is covered is 1963 to 1994 with a couple of outliers rounding-out the picture. What’s dealt with is from the Beatles-dominated beat era up to and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Avril Lavigne was the original Punk Pop Queen. Fearless, feisty and perfectly fitting for the early noughties as the manufactured antithesis of Britney and Christina, she was the rebellious antidote alongside the likes of Pink and Gwen Stefani. After a six-year hiatus, a battle with Lyme Disease, a divorce and a new millionaire boyfriend she’s back with what I was hoping would be a new, evolved sound that mirrored the growth from angsty teen sensation to mature female musician, working with her distinctive sound and vocal prowess.Her new album is capped up with a strong piano ballad, the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Chaka Khan’s last album, 2007’s Funk This was billed as the Queen of Funk’s comeback after her 80s and 90s purple patch. But after its release, apart from the odd cameo vocal on other people’s tracks, she stepped back out of the spotlight and retreated back into relative obscurity. 12 years on and she’s back again with the groove-driven Hello Happiness – an album with her new label owners, former Major Lazer man Switch and Ruba Taylor’s contributions all over both the songwriting and the production. Gone are the anthemic dancefloor vibes of “Ain’t Nobody” and “I Feel For You”, to be replaced Read more ...