New music
Liz Thomson
Birth and death are nowhere more entwined than in folk music, and the seventh album by Radio 2 Young Folk Award-winner Jackie Oates poignantly honours both her father and her daughter, his unexpected death just five days before the birth of Rosie. Inevitably, her life went into free-fall, “intense emotion at the joy and sadness that had struck me all at once”.The album, dedicated to her father, whose love of music inspired Oates, and to her daughter, is very English. Its title comes, of course, from Ewan MacColl’s great song, written as his life drew to a close “to turn grief and loss into Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The cover images of the four albums Teenage Fanclub issued on Creation Records suggest ambivalence. While Bandwagonesque’s title acknowledges the hopping onto trends endemic in pop, the graphic of a bag with a dollar sign recognises the related collateralisation of music. Thirteen's mismatched halves of a ball hints towards oppositionality as well as, with the sporting reference, competitiveness. Grand Prix features a Teenage Fanclub-branded sports car. More awareness of competition, then. Songs From Northern Britain transports a closed fairground ride into a forested landscape, a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Kate Nash is no quitter. For years her heavy London accent and kitchen-sink lyrics made her an easy target for mockery. Nash always brushed it off. Even, last year, when her record label dropped her, she refused to take things lying down. So she turned to the internet and Kickstarter. The result is Yesterday Was Forever. Some are saying it's her most sophisticated record yet.Maybe it is, maybe it's not. What is for certain is that, since her massive hit "Foundations" (2007), the sing-song voice has progressed beyond recognition. Much of the album feels more Katy Perry than Kate Nash. There's Read more ...
joe.muggs
This may be tempting fate, and minutes after publication of this she'll probably be arrested for stabbing a dog or something, but Ariana Grande seems like an abnormally benevolent presence in the superstar stratosphere. Even leaving aside her dignified and genuine-seeming reactions in the aftermath of the bombing at her Manchester concert, she generally has an air of unstarry, unforced enjoyment of what she does, which stands in stark contrast to the gimlet-eyed faux-sincerity of the Drakes, Taylor Swifts and Ed Sheerans of this world.She can also really, really sing. And not just in the way Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Initially, this month’s theartsdesk on Vinyl began with the sentence after this one, but it's so dry readers might drowse off, so I started with this one instead and would advise moving through the next one, just picking up the gist quickly... Discogs, a key hub for global record sales in physical formats, recently presented its Midyear Marketplace Analysis and Database Highlights for 2018, which reckons vinyl sales are up another 15% over the last year. Very boringly stated but good news, right? The biggest seller was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon which is predictable but it’s Read more ...
caspar.gomez
One of the biggest crowd roars of the night comes right at the start when Jake Shears runs onstage. He is wearing a grey top hat, a white tail-jacket with glittered lapel-edging, silver glittery trousers, a tight black sequinned vest top, and a bow tie on his bare neck. The 600 capacity Concorde 2, right on Brighton's seafront, is sold out. The audience had been singing along loudly with the immediate pre-show tune, “All That Jazz”, then cheered when the band walked on looking snappy in matching zig-zagged suits like tropical pyjamas. The bassist is songwriter/sometime pop star Mr Hudson and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last month, theartsdesk reviewed Skadedyr’s Musikk!, an eccentric album which skipped “through jazz, traditional music, atonal scrapings and wind instrument burblings.” Twelve Norwegian musicians were heard. Amongst them were Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson, Hans Hulbækmo and Anja Lauvdal, all of whom also trade as Moskus. Mirakler, their fourth album as such, isn’t as out there as Musikk! but it’s still an idiosyncratic ride.Double bass (played by Dietrichson), drums (Hulbækmo) and piano (Lauvdal) are Moskus’ core instruments. Hammond organ, a musical saw, various synthesisers and vibes also crop Read more ...
Owen Richards
Oh Sees have been perennial festival favourites for over 15 years now, releasing 21 albums under seven different band names. The change of name usually indicates a new direction, with previous records ranging from alt Americana (OCS) to lo-fi garage (Thee Oh Sees). 2016’s Orc christened the band’s latest moniker Oh Sees, and after a brief diversion last year, they’re back with more explorations into post-rock riffs and rhythms.Smote Reverser’s cover immediately draws to mind the melodramatic imagery of metal: a Lovecraftian leviathan tears down on a burning futuristic city. Indeed, the lyrics Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When Kentish hardcore punk two-piece, Slaves emerged with their debut album, Are You Satisfied?, they caused quite a stir with lairy tunes of austerity Britain like “The Hunter”, “Sockets” and the magnificent “Hey”. Since the heady days of 2015, however, they seem to have been somewhat stuck in the musical doldrums, in need of something to reinvigorate their sound. 2016’s follow-up album, Take Control, had great tunes like “Rich Man” and “Consume Or Be Consumed” but proved to be a set to cherry pick rather than cherish. And so, it continues to be with Acts Of Fear And Love.Isaac Holman’s Ian Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Once heard, Wimple Winch’s “Save my Soul” is never forgotten. The A-side of a flop single originally issued in June 1966, it is one of the most tightly coiled British records from the Sixties and has sudden explosions of tension suggesting the band are ready to punch anyone within reach. Late the previous year, The Who’s “My Generation” had taken pop music to new, hitherto unexplored, levels of aggression. “Save my Soul” went much further. It is a landmark.Nevertheless, before 1984 the Liverpool group's single was barely known. It had been included – in lo-fi – on the 1983 bootleg compilation Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Turning over the sleeve of With Animals reveals a full-frame picture of a Tascam Midistudio 688. First marketed in 1990, it was an eight-track home studio which aimed to bridge the gap between analogue and digital. Midi signals could be fed into it. As could digital recordings. What was input was captured as an analogue recording on a cassette tape. White Town's "Your Woman" became the best-known track recorded on this hybrid, envelope-pushing tech.Foregrounding this gear is a statement of intent. Not just to say that retro mind-sets are at work, but also that a particular ambiance is being Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Dance music duo Gorgon City exist within a fickle market. It’s all very well to mooch about on a Saturday night in Woking to house music merging into pop, R&B-tinted, smooth, garage-flecked, touched with just a whiff of Ibiza’s hedonic promise, but does anyone know who makes it or actively care enough to pursue them? Gorgon City fired out a run of Top 20 singles in 2014, but haven’t had such attention for the songs thus far released from their second album. It is, however, no worse - and may even be slightly better - than its predecessor.In any case, their market changed years ago. Read more ...