New music
Kieron Tyler
Decamping to Manchester from Philadelphia after a personal crisis seems an unlikely move. But this is what Brian Christinzio – who is BC Camplight – did in 2012. How to Die in the North was recorded in Bredbury, near Stockport.As cross-continental relocations go, Christinzio’s is improbable but – whatever the the demons he was escaping – it has proved a tonic for his music. The first two BC Camplight albums, 2005’s Run, Hide Away and 2007’s Blink of a Nihilist, were good but not remarkable, piano-borne, singer-songwriter efforts that posited Christinzio as a quirky Ben Folds or Sufjan Stevens Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Waterboys’ lynchpin, singer, guitarist and main song-writer, Mike Scott clearly has no interest in pretending that he’s still a young man. Modern Blues, the band’s first set of new material following 2013’s 25th anniversary celebration of Fisherman’s Blues, is a mature album of tunes that contemplate the world from a distinctly middle-aged perspective with all its attendant regret, nostalgia and more than a dash of hope for the future. Scott’s singing freely references the likes of Sun Ra, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Elvis. There’s even a sample of a Jack Kerouac monologue from On the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
With his new soul-inflected rasp, there aren’t many singers better equipped to perform through a bout of tonsillitis than Paolo Nutini. (Tom Waits won’t, alas, be selling out the O2.) Last night’s gig was re-scheduled from November when the infection struck. It was postponed even longer than expected for the members of the audience arriving on the broken-down Jubilee line. Add in a miserable day, with grenades of drizzle flung across the North Greenwich peninsula, and it was going to take a remarkable feat of showmanship to re-heat the audience. Fortunately, that’s just what we got. The Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Prodigy are one of the totemic bands of electronic dance music. Born out of Essex's wild inferno of rave culture at the turn of the Nineties, their first two albums are a definitive window into British dance music of the time, boasting attitude, speeding breakbeats and a gutsy sense of communal euphoria. Helmed by producer Liam Howlett, the quartet went on to become a world-conquering band, assimilating a dose of rock for their 1997 Fat of the Land album, a US chart-topper, as well as the iconic, twin-mohawk-toting "Firestarter" single and video. Their live shows, outrageous explosions of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Certain bands pre-empt dramatic sea-changes in popular music. The ones that almost get there first. These outfits arrive a smidgeon too early and create sounds that are nearly – but not quite – what's just round the corner. Think of the pub-rockers presaging punk, or Sigue Sigue Spuktnik's sample-centric electronic pulse three years before rave arrived, only on the wrong drugs and with the wrong haircuts. Similarly, the second album from French electro outfit Justice, 2011's Audio, Video, Disco, predicted US-conquering EDM, but drew too much from The Who and too little from dubstep. Even Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Magma: Köhntarkösz, Köhntarkösz Anteria, Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré“They were a Seventies phenomenon,” said snooker ace Steve Davies of Magma. “But they were a bit too far out there for most people, even if you liked progressive music. I didn't dare put them on the communal record player at sixth-form because they would have been booed off. Maybe it's because they were French.”Magma – the band Davies declared his “true obsession” – are still going strong under the guidance of their visionary drummer Christian Vander. John Lydon was another fan. The vinyl-only reissue of three of their albums, 1974’s Read more ...
Matthew Wright
With this likeable and quietly adventurous release, fears that Belle and Sebastian were losing momentum, amid the distractions of Stuart Murdoch’s God Help the Girl project, and the appearance of only two albums in nine years, can now be allayed. If they haven’t broken through in quite the way that the successes of their 1990s albums might have predicted, after nearly 20 years the band hasn’t broken up either, and the creative fecundity of this collection suggests a rejuvenation in progress.These songs combine a subtly modern sense of generic blending, combined with an old-fashioned Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Last month, Theo Parrish released his album, American Intelligence, on vinyl and CD. Now it’s available on digital, but make sure you’ve got room on your hard drive – it’s long. Seriously, marathons have been run quicker than the two hours and three minutes here.Things start well. “Drive” is a long, straight road of a track with all exits barred by stuttering cymbals. It’s compelling stuff, but Parrish, having created an audio autobahn, sticks to 70 all the way – presumably trying to pace himself. “Life Spice” is next and the sample, which sounds like it was cut on a slant, is more in keeping Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
At first it seems akin to entering a world conjured by Efterlkang at their most elegiac. Strings swell and what sounds like a cimbalom chimes. A wordless vocal sighs. After the opening instrumental – titled “Intro” – “Lovers Lane” (sic) surges forward with cascading post-punk guitar recalling Manchester’s Chameleons and a deep, deep mumbled vocal which through the murky delivery seems to be concerned with trying to get the song’s subject to wake up and realise who the singer is. After that squall, the Mittel-European two-step rhythm of the acoustic “Come on Then” and more of those stygian Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Wild Billy Childish has released well over a hundred albums (as well as numerous art projects) since the late 70s and so it's quite a shock to discover on Acorn Man that his muse doesn’t seem ready to desert him any time soon. This is all the more surprising given that the Childish world view ends in the pre-psychedelic mid-60s and is dominated by no-nonsense garage rock – with absolutely no truck with any musical developments since that time.Opening track, “It’s So Hard To Be Happy” is lively Nuggets-influenced stuff that sounds like Archie Solomons (from the TV series Peaky Blinders) Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Ever wondered what being a psychic would be like? Not the "being a fraudulent, cheap-trick magician drunk on the mere suggestion of power over a willing and eager mark" thing – but really being able to know people’s thoughts as they think them. In reality, hearing the insipid mind-screams of strangers would be spirit-crushingly dull, like watching Question Time without the mute button, but there is a less prosaic window into the mind that music offers us – improvisation.Gaussian Curve is a project featuring ambient veteran Gigi Masin, Land of Light multi-instrumentalist Jonny Nash and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
For a band dealing in noise and sonic possibilities, the niches at the coalface on which to get a foothold are few and far between. The sound has been mined for years and one has to wonder whether there are any new strains we’ve not heard somewhere before. Spectres certainly seem to think there are and, judging by their debut LP, Dying, they’re keen to prove this point to anyone within a thousand-mile radius.Opener “Drag” is almost painfully onomatopoeic – however, where some noiseniks seem happy to sound like they're so full of louche ennui that they can barely be arsed to lean over the cusp Read more ...