New music
Thomas H. Green
After 27 years away, band leader Kevin Rowland (b 1953) successfully relaunched Dexys as a recording unit in 2012. The album, One Day I’m Going to Soar, then became a theatrical show that was performed extensively, including nine nights at London’s Duke of York Theatre in 2013. Last summer a new album appeared, Let the Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul, a collection of sprightly cover versions. All this activity adds up to a vibrant new chapter in the life of one of pop’s more maverick creative minds.Dexys Midnight Runners, as they were originally known, were the brainchild of Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Pulling together a music documentary strikes me as a simple enough concept. Gather your talking heads in front of a nice enough backdrop, splice with archive footage in some semblance of a narrative order and there you go. There’s no need to, say, hire a minibus and attempt to recreate a near-mythological gig from 20 years ago. Especially if that gig happened in France.While taking his protagonists on the physical journey from Scotland to Mauron in the north west of France, director Niall McCann takes them on an emotional journey, too: from the close-knit friendships and fertile new music Read more ...
Matthew Wright
At least you always get something different from José James. Originally sprung to fame for blending jazz and hip-hop, this album has little of either, but according to his blurb, touches on R&B, soul, pop, electronica, folk, gospel and funk. Quite an achievement for 11 four-minute songs. What stands out, though, is less the ticking of genre boxes than the imaginative way he uses electronic sound a little like an acoustic instrument, with exceptional sensitivity to its diverse effects. His journey of chameleonic experimentation started with jazz, but like many musicians who’ve Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Any listeners who may have been concerned that Anton Newcombe’s last few years of sobriety might result in him turning down the psychedelia and tip-toeing towards the mainstream can breathe a sigh of relief. Don’t Get Lost is yet another cracking psychedelic head-spin with plenty of good grooves. In fact, the Brian Jonestown Massacre have created a double album here without a single duff track a mere four months after the release of their last set.As with many double albums, there is plenty of experimentation here, and in due course it may come to be viewed as the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On first pass, Beautica comes across as an exotic hybrid of 1991 school-of-Slowdive shoegazing and the fidgety music pre-Stereolab outfit McCarthy had perfected around 1989. But there’s something else; a lilting characteristic to the vocal melodies suggesting an inherent melancholy. Yet although the album’s makers were not bouncing with joy, the hymnal sense of reflection running throughout Bizarre’s Beautica is, contrastingly, uplifting.The timeline just-about fits. Beautica, reissued this week, was first released in 1994 after shoegazing’s first flush, when those still pursuing the music Read more ...
Liz Thomson
The only British gig in Josh Ritter’s so-called work-in-progress tour took place in the somewhat unlikely venue of St Stephen’s Church, Shepherd’s Bush, a rather fine example of gothic revival style. It’s almost opposite Bush Hall, which would have been a more logical venue: an altar was not perhaps the most obvious setting for the Idaho-born alt folkie though the acoustics were splendid.But there Ritter stood, pulpit to his right, flying-eagle lectern (the symbol of St John the Evangelist) to his left. The numbers of last Sunday’s hymns were still on display. Leonard Cohen liked to mix sex Read more ...
Russ Coffey
There was a time, a decade or so ago, when US indie bands would adopt such idiosyncratic names it almost felt like a ploy to stop them selling out. No band epitomised this trend more than Brooklyn's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. But whilst CYHSY managed to avoid crossing over into the mainstream, their self-released debut did become a cult hit. A biggish one. Big enough cast a shadow over the band's career. And 12 years on, fans are still asking whether they can escape it.The Tourist certainly makes a good fist of gently moving things on. More impressively it does so whilst Read more ...
theartsdesk
Scandinavian cello metal sensations Apocalyptica are hitting the UK to mark the 20th anniversary of their breakthrough debut album, the self-explanatory Plays Metallica by Four Cellos.theartsdesk has a pair of tickets to give away for their Manchester show at Bridgewater Hall on Monday 27th February and a pair for their London show at Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday 1st March. Each winner will also receive a signed copy on vinyl of the remastered Plays Metallica by Four Cellos.To be in with a chance of seeing this unique, multi-million selling band, simply email info@theartsdesk.com Read more ...
Jasper Rees
She hasn’t sung a note in a year or too and her regular appearances at veteran reunions have come to an end. In 2015 Dame Vera Lynn wasn’t well enough to attend the 70th anniversary celebration of VE Day. But she is still among us and on 20 March she qualifies for a telegram from Her Majesty. To celebrate, her original label Decca have dusted off some of the old tunes from the war and subjected them to a spot of spit and polish.The reboot is a kind of nuptial union of past and present, featuring something old (Vera Lynn’s vocals), something new (freshly recorded big band orchestrations and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The idea of a heavy metal rock band for children might be somewhat lacking in appeal for some. Images of leather and chains, frightening make-up, Anthrax-style roaring into a microphone and satanic lyrics for dear little Jonti, all a bit overwhelming. But in Finland, where hard rock is a way of life, of course there’s a heavy metal group for kids.Obsessed as we are by the culture of Nordic cool, Imagination Festival on the Southbank has pushed the boundaries of British sensibility, and here we are. Any fears melt away as five dinosaurs bound onto the stage, like friendly-faced cartoon Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Right Said Fred, in the wave of global fame that followed their 1991 mega-smash “I’m Too Sexy”, were unlikely celebrities. The two shaven-headed Fairbrass brothers seemed to have accidently wandered into pop and were laconic, likeable stars. There was something parochially British about them, even as Madonna claimed she wanted to shag them. Success of that calibre disappeared after a series of jolly hits, and the last this writer heard of them was when some thug drew blood attacking Richard Fairbrass at a gay rights rally in Russia a decade ago. Which only made them more likeable.Apart from Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's a monstrous cliché – all too often laden with problematically patronising overtones – to describe African, Caribbean, or Afro-Latin music in terms of “sunshine”, with all the carefree holiday brochure imagery that brings. But damn, the music of the Garifuna people of the Caribbean coasts of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua makes it hard not to.In particular the Honduran Aurelio Martinez, the most prominent exponent of Garifuna music since the 2009 death of the Belizean star Andy Palacio, has a guitar style which combines the lilting arpeggios of West Africa with the tremolo- Read more ...