New music
Barney Harsent
I’m not sure exactly how much it costs to rent out Abbey Road’s Studio 2, the room in which the Beatles recorded all their good stuff; the studio where, now, the “Lady Madonna” piano is shoved to one side to make way, but I’m guessing it’s lots. I, along with 30 or so other people, am here to listen to Listen, David Guetta’s fourth album. Judging by the venue, the opulent decor and the free bar, it’s one that, I suspect, he really wants us to like.David arrives and is, in equal parts, funny, polite and engaging. He starts by introducing “What I Did For Love”, a collaboration with Emeli Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
If you were to wander in off the streets and catch this band randomly you would be amazed to find such accomplished musicians. But this wasn’t any old gig, it was one of the masters of jazz, Tomasz Stanko. It should have been one of the highlights of the EFG London Jazz Festival and expectations were running high.Stanko is known for his lyrical trumpet playing, reminiscent of mid-period Miles Davis, and has been a towering figure in Polish jazz. For the uninitiated, Poland has been one the centres of jazz since the 1950s. “Jazz was freedom for us, the opposite of communism”, as Stanko pointed Read more ...
Matthew Wright
John McLaughlin made history at the Royal Festival Hall 25 years ago when he recorded a superb album featuring Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu. Last night’s performance with his fusion quartet 4th Dimension was not epochal in quite that way. The repertoire and style was largely familiar, much of it released on the band’s album earlier this year, the pieces in many cases reworked from earlier McLaughlin material. But it was remarkable for the excellence and of the ensemble playing. The sensitivity and sheer quality of interaction within the band embodied the interest in loving spirituality Read more ...
Tim Cumming
It’s been ten years since Bellowhead forged their riotous, rigorous pogo-folk, tooled up and fuelled up for closing festivals and getting the crowd to its feet, and they’ve won as many ‘best live act’ gongs as they’ve released records. Now signed to Island, and with their fifth album Revival in tow, the 11-strong troupe are a good way through a tour that lasts to the end of November, and proved to be in peak condition. Landing at Shepherds Bush, where they recorded a fine live DVD back in 2009, singer Jon Boden remains a great attention-grabbing, crowd-focusing, red-jacketed frontman, Read more ...
joe.muggs
Is there something literary in the air out in the left field? Kate Tempest as a close runner up for the Mercury Prize while other streetwise spoken word artists like George The Poet wait in the wings; a forthcoming album by electronica doyenne Jan St Werner being held together by sinister narration by American rock dark lord Dylan Carlson of Earth; and this single hour-long piece of Beckettian beatnik rambling by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Franz Wright over piano plinks and plonks from John Tilbury and ambient soundscaping by experimental producer and guitarist Christian Fennesz – all Read more ...
peter.quinn
It's day five of the EFG London Jazz Festival, and Snarky Puppy's show at the Roundhouse has sold out weeks in advance. And, as the crowd sings the gorgeous main theme of “Thing of Gold” in perfect unison, one of the reasons for the band's huge success becomes apparent. Yes, there's brilliant musicianship, spirited improv, blazing energy and the kind of impressively vast textures that only a band this size can achieve. But there's something else, which trumps all of these things. There's melody. And the kind of melody that tends to stick in your auditory cortex for days on end.“Kite”, Read more ...
Barney Harsent
You know that thing? That thing that bands of a certain age do? You know… the thing where they get all misty-eyed about past glories and decide to get the band together for one last spin of the big hits? Well, the continuing story of Loop is about as far removed from that as it’s possible to be.When, in 2013, founding member Robert Hampson announced that Loop were reforming after 22 years, it felt like an attempt to put demons to rest, for the pioneering drone rock outfit to end things properly after their sudden implosion in 1991. Indeed, after their curation of the last ever Camber Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Since Gemma Hayes' Mercury nomination in 2003, the Irish singer-songwriter has largely experienced the familar indie fate of meagre commercial returns but increasing cult appeal. How appropriate then, that for her most recent adventures in folk and low-fi, Bones and Longing, she should go down the (increasingly popular) route of crowdfunding. The result is an album that's bound to form an intimate bond with its audience.Bones and Longing kicks off with “Laughter”, a reworking of 2011’s “There’s Only Love” with a more shoe-gazy feel. Its minimal production sets the tone for much of the record Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Is it a strength or weakness that The Bad Plus, who bounced the Village Underground into raptures last night, can create a distinctive ensemble sound with everything from Nirvana to Stravinsky? They proved again that they’re a compelling live act, balancing a propulsive groove and regular melodic sweetening with chameleonic shifts of genre and electric storms of improvisation. Like most things with a hypnotic quality, however, there’s an element of repetition, and in the last couple of songs the joins in their witty musical patchwork were becoming more audible. Their distinctiveness Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If there's one commonly-known fact about Jackson Browne, it's that (with a bit of help from Glenn Frey) he wrote "Take It Easy" for the Eagles. The first track off their first album, and their first hit single, it remained a trademark for the band despite all the changes they subsequently went through. The following year, 1973, Browne released his own recording of "Take It Easy" on his second album, For Everyman. While the Eagles' version was harmony-packed and radio-friendly, Jackson's version was more introspective and philosophical, as much of his work tends to be.It epitomised the way Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The five lads who comprise the biggest slice of Simon Cowell’s pension fund are back with the follow up to last year’s Midnight Memories. One Direction, are not, in all fairness, canvassing my vote with new album Four. In fact, on the basis of this new collection of songs, they’re doorstepping eight-year-old girls to ask whether their mum’s in.1D have long had a knack of delivering songs that sound, in part, like already established hits, however the reference points here seem less pop and more… well, MOR. Single "Steal My Girl" has a piano introduction that echoes Meat Loaf, before the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A slim 69-year-old man in a rumpled sports jacket looking like a gone-to-seed history lecturer with the colour-clash dress sense of Michael Portillo is gripping a microphone so hard it’s a wonder it hasn’t been crushed. He is barking lyrics in Icelandic so gruffly that this could be any Celtic or Nordic language.This is Megas – born Magnús Þór Jónsson – the Icelandic poet, singer and cultural icon who has been ploughing this particular and peculiar furrow since the early Seventies and, in 1977, helped kick-start Icelandic punk. In Iceland, he is an enduring presence.Here, at the 1920’s cinema Read more ...