New music
Russ Coffey
Not many bands have a reputation for passion quite like The Alarm. Right from the early Eighties, tracks like "68 Guns" attracted fans who wanted music to believe in – something with a message and a conscience. That ethos came from the band's driving force, singer Mike Peters. After 10 fruitful years, Peters disbanded The Alarm (in 1991) to pursue other projects. A decade later he resurrected the group with a new line up. Equals is their first album for eight years.Curiously, though, the LP starts off not with a bang, but a slight whimper. "Two Rivers" has one of the most lightweight Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The most intriguing aspect of the mid-Seventies, Memphis-based band Zuider Zee isn’t that they took their name from a geographic feature of the Netherlands or that they dealt in against-the-grain Anglo-centric pop rock or even that the new compilation Zeenith features top-drawer music which was never released at the time. It’s that their path never crossed that of the similarly minded and perennially lauded local outfit Big Star.In the liner notes to Zeenith, Zuider Zee’s Gary Bertrand says “We had no interaction with Memphis groups, none at all.” His bandmate Richard Orange goes further: “We Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The heartland of America burns a special candle for two genres in particular: country music and heavy metal. What’s curious, then, is that there’s not been more cross-breeding between the styles. On a cartoon level, this can be attributed to one being God’s music and the other, Satan’s, but you’d have thought that would only encourage determined, disenfranchised teenagers in Lexington, Kentucky, or wherever. It is left, then, to Californian band DevilDriver to join the dots.Mega-tattooed frontman Dez Fafara made his name with Nineties nu-metallers Coal Chamber but the last decade-and-a-half Read more ...
David Kettle
With – unusually – no visiting orchestra at this year’s St Magnus International Festival in far-flung Orkney (the fall-out from delayed funding confirmations, we’re assured), there was a danger that the annual midsummer event might have felt a little – well, quiet.Not a bit of it. In fact, if anything, this year’s festival felt more densely packed than ever – perhaps with events that were smaller in scale, admittedly, but they were no less ambitious and captivating for that. Famously founded by Orkney’s most famous musical resident – Peter Maxwell Davies, who died two years ago – all of 42 Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Trumpeter Keyon Harrold grew up in Ferguson, Missouri and studied alongside Robert Glasper at the School of Jazz at The New School, in Greenwich Village, NYC. He has been a sideman with many of the biggest performers in music including Eminem, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Dr Dre, Maxwell and Common, and recorded two albums in his own name.His second album, The Mugician, was released last year to great acclaim. With collaboration from artists including Robert Glasper, Bilal, Big KRIT and Pharoahe Monch, Harrold incorporates elements of soul, reggae and hip hop into a transcendent musical statement of hope Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If Florence + the Machine’s last album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful marked a break from the exuberant, anthemic pop of her first two albums, her latest disc takes things even further with a more mature and stripped-down sound that often feels one step away from dispensing with instrumentation altogether. This is especially true of “No Choir”, which features little more than sparse piano chords, and the confessional lament of “Grace”. Elsewhere, “June” comes on like a torch song before finally exploding into overblown orchestration but it never gets its groove on and lets loose. “Sky Full Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There aren’t too many folk singers that make it into the pages of Vogue and Interview magazines, but that’s what comes of being a face of Burberry – attire that’s not necessarily a good folk fit. He’s also been snapped in the Augustus Hare catalogue modelling a rather sharp suit and tie. He’s studied theology, likes Bob Dylan and Nick Drake, and his favourite city is Jerusalem. He describes himself as “a classical folk singer”. Sometimes he sounds a little like Donovan.Quiet Man is the third outing by the Dorset-born singer-songwriter Roo Panes and it is, he says, about “contentment” and has Read more ...
Guy Oddy
A mere fortnight after the Download Festival, the Midlands was at it again over the weekend, celebrating noisy musical mavericks who have no truck with the mainstream. Indeed, if anything, Birmingham’s annual Supersonic Festival was considerably more way out than its metallic cousin in the East Midlands. Exploring culture from even more obscure places in the musical margins of the self-proclaimed New Weird Britain, there was folk music, glitchy techno, heavy psych, black metal, North African trance music and k-pop. That was just the musical side of things, as there was also plenty to sample Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s hard to know who to write about when reviewing a new Gorillaz release. According to the official line, the band have shorn their usual guests to focus on the core creative team: vocalist 2D, drummer Russell, guitarist Noodle, and new bassist Ace, borrowed from The Powerpuff Girls. Of course, behind these virtual masks is Damon Albarn, who’s teamed with experienced producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Simian Mobile Disco, Haim) and regular collaborator Remi Kabaka to create a surprisingly personal and upbeat record.Gone are the dystopian worlds of environmental ruin and elitist overlords Read more ...
Ralph Moore
The Robert Smith-curated Meltdown festival in London came to a close on Sunday night with a spectacular, concept-driven headline set by The Cure, or CUREATION 25, as the band was actually billed, presumably because of a previously contracted show at Hyde Park that's due to take place in two weeks’ time. Like Nine Inch Nails on Friday night at the same Smith-curated venue, seeing a band of this stature up close on such blistering form is a dream come true for fans, who have come far and wide to see Smith and his cohorts: bassist Simon Gallup plus Reeves Gabrels on guitar, Jason Cooper on drums Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Gota Fría, or “cold drop”, is a Spanish weather phenomenon associated with violent rainstorms, when high pressure has caused a pocket of cold air to dissociate itself from the warmer clouds. Meteorologists, please excuse my basic and probably erroneous interpretation; the point here is that any person who’s experienced mental ill-health will likely relate to the idea of a sudden dip in temperature, a torrential downpour, and the accompanying isolation. On Gota Fría, the Peru-born, Bristol-based singer-songwriter Beth Rowley explores darkness and light via classic songwriting, delivered Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the cover of the 19 May 1979 issue of the music weekly Sounds was dominated by a photo of American rocker Ted Nugent, attention was also grabbed by a trail for a feature on “Heavy Metal…The New British Bands”. The two-page article it related to was headlined If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It. Under that were the words “The New Wave of British Heavy Metal: First in an Occasional Series”. The feature, by Geoff Barton, focussed on The Bandwagon, a heavy metal disco, and a triple-bill show at North London’s Music Machine with Angel Witch, Iron Maiden and Samson.Sounds had been buttering- Read more ...