New music
Katie Colombus
With the tragic passing of Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan, I've been thinking a lot about the importance of the soundtrack to youth. I spent days wailing along to "Ode to My Family", raging out to "Zombie" or bouncing around the local indie disco with friends to "Linger". They are moments that now seem frozen in that time, that were reflected in the quirks, uniqueness, newness and message of the Cranberries' sound.What strikes me with First Aid Kit's Ruins is a similarity (perhaps imagined as I'm consumed with memories of one of my old faves) in the uniqueness of Swedish Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Many hard rock aficionados say that Motörhead’s greatest work was all with the “classic” line-up of Lemmy, drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor and guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke (who died last week aged only 67 - this review was written before that news came through). While there’s no denying their 1976-82 output was storming, Motörhead’s later career contained multitudes of gems that were its match. The band’s guitarist for this period, for 31 years from 1984 until Lemmy’s death, was Phil Campbell. He now releases the debut album by a band he formed with his three sons shortly after his Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The critic Simon Reynolds characterised Butterfly Child’s debut album Onomatopoeia as the sound of “vitrified everglades in J.G. Ballard’s The Illuminated Man, where some kind of entropy has slowed down time, so that living creatures are literally petrified, encrusted and crystal.”Such circumlocution was unsurprising as Onomatopoeia was originally issued by Rough Trade in August 1993 during a between-time moment for independently minded pop. Britpop hadn’t yet taken off, grunge was a clichéd bandwagon and the first flush of shoegazing had run its course. It hit shops around the same Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Limiñanas are considered something of a musical jewel across the Channel but, like many fine mainland European bands before them, have been somewhat criminally ignored in the UK over their nine-year career. In a just world and with the wind blowing in the right direction, Shadow People, their latest album of beguiling and psychedelic guitar pop, however, would certainly change that. Well, if the anglophone world was more prepared to listen to pop songs that aren’t necessarily sung in an approximation of the Queen’s English, it might.Taking its cues from the more relaxed end of the Velvet Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As a prime example of high-end Gallic art-pop, Triomphe pushes the right buttons. The mid-tempo opening cut “Senga” sets the tone. A motorik rhythm and a shuffling counterpoint are complemented by bubbling bass guitar, insistent single note guitar lines and subtle keyboard stabs. The French-language vocal line is hooky, minor key and delivered in close-miked yet distant voice. It exudes class. Krautrock and Air are in there. A smidge of Stereolab too. As is – with the way the song builds and builds – a suggestion of stadium-rock dynamics.It’s the same throughout Triomphe, where a sense of Read more ...
Helen Wallace
Joseph Houston’s recital gave us the piano exposed, sent up, psychoanalysed; in short, piano as theatre. And whether silently depressing keys or creating chords with an elbow, the young Berlin-based pianist brought formidable focus and unshowy mastery.He also revealed a rare talent for curation, creating a narrative that began with a walk around the piano and ended with Christian Mason’s numinous Remembered Resonance, grappling in between with that "curved, tensed, gridded institution of an instrument", in the words of composer Louis d’Heudieres. Houston gave tremendous direction and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Five years might not, at first, seem like a long time between albums, certainly when you consider that even tectonic shift left the Avalanches in its wake while they were creating Wildflower. But a lot has happened to Californian indie rockers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club during that time. Not least, drummer Leah Shapiro has undergone surgery – crowdfunded by BRMC devotees – for a serious brain condition, and her road to recovery has been mapped out for her by a surgeon who also happens to be a fan of the band. There is, it's fair to say, a lot of love in the room.As well as showing Read more ...
joe.muggs
If you see any list of greatest living drummers and the Australian Jim White isn't on it, you should look at it askance. Since he started Dirty Three in the early '90s, White has played with the cream of global alt-rock musicians: the Nick Caves, PJ Harveys, Cat Powers and Will Oldhams. But he's way, way more than a sideman, and the closer he is to the front of the stage, the more interesting the music will be.His playing is uniquely conversational and interactive, locking into and rolling around whatever foil is presented to it, often making him closer to a free jazz player than a rock Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Now that the 40th anniversaries of 1976 and 1977 as the years which birthed punk rock have themselves become history, surveyors of rock’s rich tapestry will inevitably turn to what came next. The year 1978 and what followed punk are easy targets and, in terms of labels, post-punk is accepted as a next wave out of the traps. Stylistically, of course, it’s a meaningless designation: all post-punk really signifies is that something came after punk and here’s a handy handle for it.Proof of the five-CD set To the Outside of Everything's issues grappling with this amorphousness is acknowledged by Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
The Go! Team have been unrivalled in the world of euphoric hip-pop after their samplerific debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, blasted its way onto the 2005 Mercury Prize shortlist. Since then, founding member Ian Parton has utilised everything from typewriters to gospel choirs to songs about milk in his quest to be a “cheerleader for a better world”. Their new album, Semicircle, takes this tradition of innovation and fun to new heights.One of the most striking things about the album is the instrumentation. Parton and his merry band of musicians (including Sam Dook, Simone Odaranile, and Read more ...
peter.quinn
The vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant first came to the attention of the jazz scene when she won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz competition in 2010. In 2013, her Mack Avenue Records debut WomanChild garnered a Grammy nomination. Two years later, she picked up her first Grammy Award when her follow-up release For One To Love won Best Jazz Vocal Album.Born in Miami to a French mother and Haitian father, McLorin Salvant started classical piano studies at five and began singing in the Miami Choral Society at eight. In 2007 she moved to Aix-en-Provence to study law as well Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As well as creating a true American musical phenomenon, led by from the front by Nirvana, the early-to-mid-Nineties grunge explosion opened a window of opportunity for multitudes of bands on its furthest fringes. South Carolina punk-metallers Corrosion of Conformity hit a career peak at the time, mingling an old-school hard rock sound with something bluesier and spacier, the whole thing marinated in the guitar and vocals of Pepper Keenan. He left to concentrate on his role in metal supergroup Down, featuring members of Pantera and others, but now returns for his first album since 2005 with Read more ...