New music
joe.muggs
The career of the Gran Canaria-born musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa seems to work in an accelerated time-frame, speeding through decades and eras as he develops his sound. Though he has always worked with digital technology, his early work sounded archaic, its massed carnival percussion and traditional melodies roaming around the Afro-Latin diaspora.Then, on 2008's Pop Negro, he embraced modernism, albeit still with a retro twist, rigorously examining and adopting the high-gloss production and songwriting techniques of the biggest mainstream American and Latino pop acts of the mid-1970s to mid-'90s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Paris Sisters were a look and a sound. Slightly different but still peas in a pod, Albeth, Priscilla and Sherrell Paris united to make often moodily minor-key music always suggestive of angels stamping their feet. Otherwordly. Yet hard-edged. The defining vocalist was Priscilla, whose slightly husky, ever-intimate mid-tone evoked the wind whispering its secrets. No one had sounded like her before and, at her best, only Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell has come close to Priscilla’s vivid union of the languorous and yearning.Albeth (1935-2014), Priscilla (1945-2004) and Sherrell had been Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The burden of expectation on Jack Garratt is somewhat unfair. Among the accolades he’s picked up over the past year are Critics Choice Brit Award 2015 and top slot in the BBC Sound of 2016. The latter puts him in the company of previous winners Years & Years, Sam Smith, Jessie J and Ellie Goulding, pop big hitters all. Clearly the music biz is expecting Garratt to make them a lot of money. They will sell him to us any which way they can – credible but pop, electronic underground but viable for the teen-girl fan market, etc. This makes churlish old dogs like me bridle but, really, it's Read more ...
mark.kidel
The Malian music scene has always been dominated by the griot caste, the jalis who serve as historians, praise-singers and guardians of the tradition. Rokia Traoré, like Salif Keita, isn’t a griot, but a member of the nobility. She is not bound by the same rules and expectations, and is free to take liberties that the servants of the great Manding heritage are not.This is the second of her collaborations with producer John Parrish, the Bristol-based musician who has been both inspiration and studio helpmate to PJ Harvey for many years. Thankfully, and unlike some other producers who have Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It would be easy to write off The Jezabels’ third album as style over substance. The gaudy, synth-heavy gloom-pop of Synthia seeks to catch you off guard with its sexualised sighs, sinewy rhythms and liquid melodies. It’s only on repeated listens that its wider themes emerge: gender roles and identity; desire and disgust and, in “Smile”, a devastating put-down of the everyday street-harasser.It begins with “Stand and Deliver” – an immersive, seven-and-a-half-minute synthesised dream sequence during which frontwoman Hayley Mary transforms from wide-eyed ingenue into high priestess of electro- Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If these decisions were made on the back of quality and creativity rather than marketing muscle, Barry Adamson wouldn’t just be taking care of the next Bond theme tune, he’d be scoring the whole film. Unfortunately, media and record company politics will ensure that we get another substandard cruise singer instead, and it’ll be everyone’s loss. Adamson’s soulful lounge jazz with grit and filmless soundtracks often suggest the legendary Lee Hazelwood fronting post-jazzers Get The Blessing with plenty of dark comedy, and Know Where To Run shows that after a 30-year solo career, there’s plenty Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In the latter half of the 1980s, Wendy James’s band Transvision Vamp created quite a stir. Their music, including a chart-topping second album, was fizzing, bright-coloured, punky power pop and James was a pouting, hissy-fit of a frontwoman, emanating urgent wannabe-famous sexuality. She disappeared from view in the Nineties, turning up again in the new millennium, first with a band, Racine, and then solo.The second and final Racine album and James’s 2010 solo effort, I Came Here to Blow Minds, boast an unexpectedly effective gnarled, druggy punk. These were followed by a 2012 double A-side Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For its 6 April 1985 issue, the NME chose The Long Ryders as its cover stars. The colour picture of the band was emblazoned “A Shotgun Wedding of Country and Punk.” The Los Angeles outfit attracted attention as part of a wave of California bands overtly drawing from the past. Local peers included The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate and The Three O’Clock.Competition was tough. Bands from elsewhere in the States were also voguish during the pivotal years of 1983 to 1986: Green on Red, Let’s Active, R E.M. and The Replacements amongst them. The directly punk-rooted Black Flag and Hüsker Dü were on Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Canadian singer-songwriter Basia Bulat’s first three albums were recognisably folky. Her main instrument was the autoharp. Good Advice is different. With its more upfront songwriting and verve, her fourth album is a giant leap. It is also Bulat’s best to date.Good Advice abandons her previous approach to embrace an R ‘n’ B-influenced pop with gospel-inclined melodies (the only element nodding back to her former self). The instrumental framing is totally new: booming drums, bubbling bass, shuffling percussion, keyboards, odd stabs of sax and a supporting chorale. Her voice is more powerful Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Kula Shaker first tasted success in 1996, with the monster hit K. While the album was a commercial success, their Eastern-hippy image meant some of the guys - especially singer Crispin Mills - found it hard to be taken seriously. In 1999, Mills put the band on hold while he tried his hand at other projects. Some years later Kula Shaker was reformed. They have been slowly chugging along, millimetres under the radar, ever since. K2.0 aims to be a a straight return to the old, 'classic', formula: sitars communing with guitars whilst karmic words float over the top. The Read more ...
peter.quinn
With everything they touch seemingly transforming into artistic gold, shapeshifting US collective Snarky Puppy are currently on a roll. Following their 2014 Grammy win for Family Dinner Volume One, they’ve since chalked up ‘Best Jazz Group’ in the 2015 Downbeat Readers Poll, plus a Grammy nomination in the ‘Best Contemporary Instrumental Album’ category for last year’s Sylva. This purple patch looks set to continue with the arrival of Family Dinner Volume Two.Serving up another appetizing smorgasbord of songs that range from the hyperventilated funk of “I Remember” (take a bow, LA duo Knower Read more ...
Guy Oddy
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since Elton John famously jumped onstage at a 1973 Stooges gig in Atlanta dressed as a gorilla and almost gave the drug-addled Iggy Pop a heart attack. While the Godfather of Punk is still playing the wildman when he hits the stage, it’s fair to say that the ennobled Elton has slowed down somewhat.Elton John has, of course, long embraced sobriety, family life and Disney soundtrack appearances and anyone hoping for a David Bowie-like radical reinvention of his easy-on-the ear shtick is going to be disappointed. Wonderful Crazy Night is Elton’s 32nd Read more ...