New music
Kieron Tyler
At September 2010’s MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga took the stage in a dress made of stitched-together cuts of meat. The outfit, she said, was a political statement worn to draw attention to the aspect of the US military's don't ask, don't tell policy preventing anyone who "demonstrate[s] a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from joining the forces. The first female singer to wear a meat dress on stage, though, had less of a profile.Lady Gaga’s prototype was Liverpool-born art-rock provocateur Linder Sterling who, on 5 November 1982, was playing Manchester’s Haçienda with Read more ...
Liz Thomson
In the era of star-making TV progs and here-today-gone-tomorrow musicians, just how wonderful is it to have a new album from a man who marked his 80th birthday three years ago by signing a new contract with Eric Corne’s Forty Below Records?John Mayall, Manchester-born “godfather of the British blues”, is a true guitar legend, an elder statesman to whom so many of rock’s key players owe a huge debt – among them John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, Mick Taylor and, of course, Eric Clapton. Whose collection does not include the 1966 classic John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton on which Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Another peripatetic global music update from theartsdesk's Peter Culshaw, hosted by Music Box Radio. This edition features forthcoming album releases from hard salsa revivalists La Mambanegra, a remix from heroic desert rockers Tinariwen and electro Tunisian stars Bargou 08. We go to Brazil for the adventurous Sāo Paulo singer Luisa Maita and preview new jazz tunes from Brad Mehldau and E.S.T. There’s a new track from rebel star Manu Chao. Out this month is the new album from Aurelio, already in various music to-look-out-for-in-2017 lists. His cool take on garifuna music from Beliza and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
New releases by Mike Oldfield don’t exactly grow on trees, but nor can they be deemed rarities. For the first three decades he brought out roughly half a dozen a decade. But Return to Ommadawn is only his second since 2008. As the title announces, it tours the landscape of his third album Ommadawn, which he recorded in his own studio at Hergest Ridge in 1975 and played pretty much everything that didn’t require breath (wind instruments and vocals).It’s roughly the same story here except that Oldfield blows on his own penny whistles, which feature prominently in the mock-Celtic musical Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It may be five years since their last album, Celebration Rock, and the world may have turned several somersaults of late, but Japandroids’ love of tasty power pop songs that suggest Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ bar-room rock with a hefty dose of New Wave attitude remains a musical constant in these crazy times. That said, it would seem that in 2017, Brian King and David Prowse have got their sights firmly set on writing an anthem for the millennial generation, as Near to the Wild Heart of Life is awash with songs of wide-eyed exuberance, flavoured with big production values that Read more ...
joe.muggs
This seems a logical progression for The xx. The super-stripped-back sound of their first two albums has got them a very long way indeed – along with fellow melancholicist James Blake the diffident trio formed a twin-pronged stealth British invasion of American pop culture, influencing the influencers and weaving themselves into the fabric of things. But as they've played ever bigger arenas the temptation to give their sound a bit of a boost must've grown steadily, doubly so given that in the interim since 2012's Coexist their beat-programmer and producer Jamie xx has had sizable success in Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The flaming pigtails say it all. More St Trinian’s than gangsta, the 23-year-old Croydon rapper Nadia Rose presents (mostly) the lighter side of South London street life. Despite a less than incendiary last place in the BBC’s recent Sound of 2017 competition, Rose had already captured enough attention for Highly Flammable to catch fire with “Boom” and “Station”, 2015’s two feisty singles. They were both a bit rough round the edges but throbbing with the sort of attitude that captures an audience.That attitude is summed up by the video of “Station”, which was shot with Rose rapping on the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1942, Roy Acuff set up Acuff-Rose Music in partnership with Nashville-based songwriter and talent scout Fred Rose. The new publishing company was dedicated to treating songwriters decently. They would not be cheated out of their copyrights. There would be clear and honest accounting. The contracts offered would have better percentages than rival publishers. There would be no shady deals. Acuff-Rose cocked a snook at the country music establishment and, in time, had writers as important as The Everly Brothers, Lefty Frizzell, Don Gibson and Roy Orbison on its books. Acuff and Rose had Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
God knows we need originality in pop, and French singer Petite Meller delivers it. At least, she does visually, which, in 2017, is 50 percent of the game. Like Yolandi Visser of Die Antwoord, she offers a direct subversion of femininity. However, where Visser is confrontationally satirical, Meller’s image is uncomfortable, creepy even, Picnic at Hanging Rock Victoriana by way of rouged baby doll mannequin weirdness. The music is more straightforward.What stands out immediately is Meller’s cutesy toddler voice. It’s undoubtedly divisive but, as with rising UK act Let’s Eat Grandma, such vocal Read more ...
mark.kidel
Eno pioneered ambient music way back in the 1970s, in collaborations with Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, and on his own label. His new album continues this adventure in search of stillness, at a time when we are more than ever shaped by muddled layers of high-speed narratives, fuelled by instant communication and hell-bent on denying the presence of the here and now.Like Xenakis, the avant-garde composer of the last century, who used mathematical formulae and discourse as a shield for deeply emotional music, Eno’s algorithm-generated slow-motion cascades of morphing tone are anything Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
50 is titled to mark fifty years of touring. Now 75, Michael Chapman released Rainmaker, his first album, in 1969. Though well-known devotees have never been lacking – Bowie recruited Mick Ronson after hearing his playing on a Chapman album; Elton John wanted Chapman for his band – his lengthy presence has not brought Chapman the stature of contemporary and similarly idiosyncratic British singer-songwriters like Roy Harper or John Martyn. Yet, he endures.The swift follow-up to 2014’s The Polar Bear is ample evidence why. 50 opens with the atmospheric, energised and rolling “A Spanish Incident Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Saxophonist, composer and former Radio 3 New Generation Artist Trish Clowes has created a reputation for original chamber jazz of densely woven harmonies and delicate, sometimes folk-tinged melody. This fourth album, with a quartet rather than (as often in the past) a small orchestra is billed as a new musical direction. It isn’t really, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of: in style and mood Clowes rather impressively recaptures the unshowy profundity of her chamber orchestra with only a quartet.There’s a remarkable range of subject matter here, testament to the diversity and maturity of Read more ...