New music
Thomas H. Green
Arriving back onstage for an encore a broadly smiling Gary Numan bathes in roared football chants of “Numan! Numan!”. He tells us it’s just over 40 years since he released his first single, “That’s Too Bad”, but that he and his tight four-piece band are going to make a “bad attempt” at playing it. He’s wrong. It’s one of the best-delivered songs of the night, sounding Seventies punky to the delight of the crowd, many of whom clearly recall the era. It’s not a song he usually plays and not typical of his set, but it has a freshness.Numan’s career has had five main phases: 1. His punk Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Birmingham outfit Pram achieved profile amongst alt-music connoisseurs shortly after the millennium. They’d been going for over a decade but their weird-masked presentation and spooked, abject music suddenly struck a chord. Being truly an art band, they were unmoved and gradually faded whence they came, their capacity for offbeat instruments noted for posterity, a bunch of capsules of occasionally creepy chamber pop oddness left behind. A decade on, and they’ve resurrected with a new line-up. They are still unlikely to bother the Top 10.That last sentence isn’t quite fair. It implies their Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Cornbury Festival holds a very special place in my heart. When the babies were young, we realised that if we were going to be up all night without sleep we might as well be sat in a field listening to music rather than staring out of the window at a dreary North London street. Luckily for us, we accidentally picked one of the most family-friendly festivals out there.Over the years Cornbury has gone from strength to strength, headlining musicians from Bryan Adams, Kaiser Chiefs and Seal to Tom Jones, Razorlight, Jools Holland, and Van Morrison. Thank abso-goodness then, that rather than Read more ...
Ellie Porter
System of a Down guitarist and vocalist Daron Malakian isn’t going to let a little thing like his band going on an extended hiatus get in the way of releasing new music. With SOAD having gone all quiet on the recording front since 2005’s double whammy of Mezmerize and Hypnotize (they have been touring, though) – a move down to frontman Serj Tankian, Malakian says – Malakian decided to get cracking on a new project, Scars on Broadway, with SOAD drummer John Dolmayan. Now, in this follow-up to Scars on Broadway’s self-titled 2009 debut album, Malakian has gone it alone Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street. To vinyl. Only theartsdesk on Vinyl doesn’t just cover music for dancing, it covers every style of music imaginable (with a good showing for pop this month). Whatever your taste, from the heaviest rock to the lightest ambient music, theartsdesk on Vinyl will review it along the way. Enough intro, though. More juice. Let’s head to the largest, tastiest monthly review showcase on the planet. Dive in!Kali Uchis Isolation (Rinse/Virgin)Seems everyone knows about Kaliu Uchis – she's been on a Gorillaz album (and they're on here too), Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
At 29 minutes, the second album from Paris’s Juniore is short. But as it makes its point, it’s hard to hear how it needs to be longer. Magnifique opens with “Ça Balance”, a harmony-drenched vapour trail suggesting a kinship with the great French Eighties band Antena. It’s that good. As is the rest of this album.Nodding to Sixties archetypes such as John Barry, Ennio Morricone and late-decade Françoise Hardy as well as the synth-pop of early Elli et Jacno, the glistening surf-inclined bricolage pop heard across Magnifique’s eight tracks could have appeared in the shops 30 years ago without Read more ...
Keaton Henson
This Friday, July 20, sees the world premiere of Six Lethargies, a composition by the singer-songwriter Keaton Henson, created collaboratively with various artists, including the Britten Sinfonia who’ll be performing it. Henson, who has six acclaimed albums to his name and is also a successful visual artist, created the work over three years around the theme of anxiety and depression. By way of research, as well as drawing on his personal experiences in the area of mental health, he met with neuroscientists and music theorists, eventually bringing an immersive installation element to the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
"Homeward Bound – the Farewell Tour", they were calling it. But with a show this strong, nobody would complain if that farewell were to turn out at some point not to be absolutely final.Paul Simon is 76, and there is absolutely no doubt that as he sings in "The Boxer", "the fighter still remains". He has just done 10 of these shows across Europe in the last 16 days, each of at least two hours, and yet the voice still sounds strong, and his energy completely intact. This was a performance full of vim, sass and clear intent.Above all it's a show about the power of all those great songs, and a Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Hailing from Canada and born from the ashes of cult indie heroes Women (the band responsible for that chiming Calgary guitar sound), Preoccupations haven’t let up since their first LP Viet Cong was released just three years ago. Two albums and a whole lot of touring later, the four-piece have hit the road again in support of their latest release, New Material, which reveals a more brooding, considered side to their frenetic style of math-rock-post-punk-doom-goodness. The introduction of this "new material" to their set at The Haunt in Brighton made for a performance that, while more nuanced, Read more ...
Matthew Wright
This is Drake’s account of his astrological sign, the only one to be represented in multiple forms: an eagle and phoenix as well as the poisonous creepy-crawlie. (At an unwieldy 25 songs, on a kind-of double album, divided into two kind-of halves, it certainly isn’t a reference to the petite, nimble insect that comes quickly to a point.) It’s part hip hop album, part R&B album, with a (slightly) different vibe for each, a separation which some critics have regretted as a regression from the previously boundary-busting performer. The album, if that’s what it is, highlights what we Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Music from Sudan is overshadowed by the country’s recent history. At the end of June 1989, Colonel Omar al-Bashir assumed control and it became a one-party state. Shariah law was introduced. Osama Bin Laden was resident in capital city Khartoum from 1991 to 1996. Tension between the mostly Muslim north and mostly Christian south undermined any facade of stability al-Bashir sought to impose. The south was declared independent in 2011. Conflict in Darfur, in the west of the country, left 300,000 people dead and led to just over 3 million displaced people.These are, of course, headlines. True Read more ...
Ellie Porter
This woozy, seductive slice of gothic Americana is the Canadian quartet’s first album in six years, a swampy follow-up to the icy, winter-inspired sounds of their last offering, The Wilderness. “All That Reckoning Part 1” gets things going, an oppressive tale of a relationship with dark undercurrents. “This bed was poison / And I lay afraid of ever touching you,” breathes Margo Timmins, whose rich, smoky vocals go from seductive and sinister to sweet and romantic over the course of the record. Unfortunately, a few of these songs – including the next track, “When We Arrive” –seem to Read more ...