New music
Kieron Tyler
Although the trademark aqueous shimmer is still recognisable on Life Among the Savages, the sound of San Francisco’s Papercuts has changed since 2011’s Fading Parade. On his fifth album as Papercuts, Jason Quever has kept arrangements more sparse than ever yet everything has a distance. His world appears to be one of permanent dusk, when melancholy is inescapable. Life Among the Savages is the sound of outside looking in.The song titles lay it out: “Still Knocking at the Door”, “New Body”, “Staring at the Bright Lights”, “Afterlife Blues”, “Tourist”. Quever’s sense of isolation brings to this Read more ...
Aimee Cliff
Sliding onto the stage of the O2 Arena in a leotard emblazoned with her own mouth and tongue, Miley Cyrus immediately starts bouncing around screaming, “I’m not going down without a fucking fight!”Fighting spirit, aimed at nothing and everything, is the heart of Bangerz. It’s Miley against the world - and that includes her audience, whom she repeatedly refers to as “you fuckers” and projectile-spits all over. She’s a total brat from start to finish. This being her first show back on the road after a spell in hospital, she even turns her anti-authority backlash in the direction Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Robert Cray’s veteran blues band made a compelling case for their unique blend of soul and blues at the Barbican last night. Despite the five Grammys, record sales well into seven figures, and investiture in the Blues Hall of Fame in 2011 at the precocious age of 57, he’s sometimes suspected of watering down the blues tradition. What he’s actually done is preserve the most of the attitudes and atmosphere of traditional blues, while modernising some of the instrumentation and phrasing.Off-stage, Cray is considered and soft-spoken. He comes across as a clean-shaven, fresh-scrubbed version of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Anyone who is unfamiliar with Swans might reasonably assume that these veterans of New York’s early eighties “noise” scene to be well past their best by now. As powerful as Black Sabbath on steroids, Swans’ music has taken in industrial noise, art rock, gothic country and, since reforming as a going concern in 2010, brooding, apocalyptic mini-symphonies. To Be Kind is their 13th studio album, the band has been around (on and off and in various incarnations) for more than 30 years and, singer and bandleader, Michael Gira won’t be seeing his 60th birthday again. However, such an assumption Read more ...
peter.quinn
Crazed magnificence, off the cuff improv, pinpoint timing. And that was just MC and trombonist Ashley Slater's on-stage banter. In one of the most hotly anticipated jazz gigs of 2014, the return to the Ronnie Scott's stage for the seminal and utterly singular big band Loose Tubes – almost a quarter of a century after their valedictory residency in September 1990 – surpassed all expectations. Following hot on the heels of their gig at the Cheltenham Jazz festival on Saturday, the jazz band's radical polystylism – referencing everything from Charles Ives and traditional music to samba and Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Library in Birmingham is a venue that is almost the dictionary definition of shabby chic, with its neo-classical plaster mouldings hanging onto the walls in a room that has definitely seen better days. Unfortunately, the sound quality for last night’s show by Clean Bandit, the bright young things from Cambridge University who have caused quite a stir by mixing classical chamber music with garage pop, was similarly grubby. While this made the band’s much-hyped live strings all but inaudible for much of the show, it didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of their audience of mainly 20somethings. This Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Wayne Cochran: Goin’ Back to Miami – The Soul Sides 1965-1970With his dyed-blond pompadour, Wayne Cochran looks bizarre enough. But once he opens his mouth, the weirdness level is kicked into orbit. He sounds exactly like a wild cross between James Brown and Otis Redding. Although white, his soul music is not the smooth or sweet blue-eyed fare of a Len Barry or a Righteous Brothers. Goin’ Back to Miami convincingly makes the case for Cochran as a soul great.The compilation opens with the self-penned 1966 single and title track (watch a slightly fuzzy looking TV performance on the next Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
That Nikki Nack, the third album from tUnE-yArDs, sounds as if it could share the name with some brightly-coloured superhero from a nursery rhyme seems appropriate, because that’s always been how I’ve pictured Merrill Garbus. It’s a persona that she has seemed happy to play up to this time around, in the colourful publicity shots and Pee-wee’s Playhouse-inspired videos that have preceded this release, but it’s also one that’s a perfect fit: an eclectic and experimental creator of songs (“songwriter” seems a touch simplistic a way to describe the way that she loops beats, whoops and ukelele), Read more ...
joe.muggs
Back on the air for their best show yet, Peter and Joe are here to take you round the world, and occasionally further afield still.In the first half they focus on the groove, with Cambodian and Mexican-Peruvian psychedelia, Brazilian rap beats, French dubstep, Polish trip-hop, Glasgow Afrobeat and Welsh rap-folktronica among others; in Part 2 they go altogether deeper, with Saharan radio recordings, Maghrebi musicians digging Stravinsky, a Japanese electronica monk and unearthed cyborg gay porn soundtracks. Enjoy the trip! Full tracklist is below. The Arts Desk 03/04/14 by Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Travelling minstrels once spread news and social commentary via song, leavening it with bawdiness, social satire and raw humour. On those terms, Lily Allen is the premier folkloric songwriter of our times. Her songs are filled with pin-sharp detail that places them right in the now, some so precisely that by the end of the year they’ll be outdated (notably the title track’s caustic crack at the girl-pop crown). If music were judged on lyrics alone Sheezus would receive a straightforward 5/5 score, for its ruthless, specific, righteous perspective on themes running from our blank-eyed i-celeb Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Anyone who remembers the critical mauling that The Horrors received on the release of their first album, 2007’s Strange House, might be surprised to learn that seven years later, they have just put out a fourth set of new songs. Not only that, but that it wouldn’t be a stretch to describe Luminous as eagerly awaited by many.However, while the release of each previous Horrors album has seen significant stylistic musical leaps, Luminous sees the band settle into the sound of 2011’s Skying and build further upon its early Simple Minds-esque template. This isn’t to say, however, that Luminous is Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Who knew the human spirit needed such bureaucratic care? The celebration of International Jazz Day, founded by UNESCO in 2011, at King’s Place last night was nothing if not well cared-for. Sponsored SGI-UK, an arm of the global Buddhist movement, who were raising funds for UNICEF, proceedings are guided globally by legendary pianist Herbie Hancock, a UNESCO Ambassador for Intercultural Dialogue and Chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. It bore the warning signs of art designed to appease a committee, and that’s a very different thing from making the spirit leap and the heart Read more ...