New music
mark.kidel
Brian Eno is a born collaborator as well as a highly esteemed producer. He is one of those musicians with a strong personal signature but who work with a minimum of ego. Branded as an egghead – a barbed label which reflects as much as anything a deeply British mistrust of intelligence – Eno might seem an unlikely partner for Underworld’s Karl Hyde. But he’s, among other things, a lover of intricate rhythmic patterns – a love first revealed in the groundbreaking collaboration with David Byrne, My Life in a Bush of Ghosts, as well as a fan gospel's inspirational vibrancy. Both these Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Dreaming about teeth, teeth falling out specifically, is supposed to represent anxiety and transition. Already this year The Hold Steady have based an album around the concept and now, on his own band’s fourth album, Greg Barnett of Pennsylvania punks The Menzingers seems to be wrestling with similar visions. “Dreaming that my teeth are falling out,” he sings on “Bad Things”, the album’s second track; “I’m driving, there’s no steering wheel.”Sure, the four-piece are old hands at this by now, but it’s hard to believe that there isn’t a social subset of anxiety devoted to the album after the Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
My preconceived and somewhat misguided idea of the Cabo Verde islands (the official name for Cape Verde these days) was that they were basically a hotter version of the Canaries, with a spare and volcanic landscape that, being a Creole culture in the middle of nowhere, produced a few remarkably wistful singers, most famously the great Cesaria Evora. The islands seem to be a hothouse of tremendous female singers - other purveyors of nostalgic music being the likes of Sara Tavares, Lura and the more cosmopolitan Paris-based Mayra Andrade. On my first proper night in Praia, the capital of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The career of Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero is an anomaly. It’s heartening that such curveballs occur, with artists taking an alternative, individual route to success. To those with any rock’n’roll romance left, it’s a sign that, even in these ADD., Tweet-trending, homogenous times, there are still unexpected ways for atypical acts to sustain a career. The pair were metal-loving Mexican teens who became virtuoso acoustic Dublin street buskers, leading to an Irish hit album and, eventually, a global career that’s seen them working on Hollywood blockbusters. Appealingly, they fit no pop Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Grace Jones: NightclubbingThe scary, steely Grace Jones persona distracts from what has always been her best aspect – the music. Of course, the image is inextricably linked but, taken on their own, her albums have the power to delight. Nightclubbing is hands-down her best album. Originally issued in 1981, it was a coherent statement sequenced like a nightclub act which had danceable peaks, toughness, the influence of Weimar-era Berlin cabaret and a reflective, sensitive conclusion which left a lingering impression. Its reissue brings an opportunity for a fresh assessment. Especially as two Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Was Britpop really two whole decades ago? As rumours fly around about an Oasis Glastonbury reunion, Noel’s nemesis Damon Albarn has certainly not stood still. After Mandarin opera, world music and fronting a cartoon band among other things, he has finally found time for his debut solo album. Everyday Robots is hardly likely to challenge Parklife in the sales department or receive retrospectives in 2034, but it is a strikingly memorable, strangely melancholy work.The tone from the start is distinctly mellow. Nothing jumps out at you but it all seeps in on repeated listens. Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The March release of North Star, Curved Air's first studio album for 38 years, was no small triumph for vocalist Sonja Kristina and drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa. Surging yet deliquescent, it echoes here and there the psychedelic pomp of the first three LPs they and original core members Francis Monkman and Darryl Way recorded at the height of the progressive rock era.Sonja Kristina Linwood was a former folkie and a two-and-a-half year veteran of the stage musical Hair when, in January 1970, she joined violinist Way and keyboardist-guitarist Monkman's classically based group Sisyphus, Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Back in the Eighties fans of Fish (of Marillion) considered his groovy wordbending to be art. Others begged to differ. Lloyd Cole and Atzec Camera-types would rubbish him as a slightly preposterous merchant of sixth-form poetry. Perhaps both had a point. Mk 1 Marillion certainly could be pretentious, but they also, undeniably, had some killer lines. "On promenades where drunks propose/ to lonely arcade mannequins" is, for me, a suburban evocation worthy of Richard Thompson. A Feast of Consequences - finally on general release – is Fish’s 10th post-Marillion studio album. On forums Read more ...
Guy Oddy
“What Goes On”, opening track of Pixies first album since 1991’s Trompe Le Monde, proves a suitably thrilling beginning for a set that has been much anticipated by fans who may have been concerned that Black Francis’ crew were happy as a heritage act. The chugger-chugger rhythm combines with plenty of volume and feedback and suggests a band that isn’t just going through the motions. This should cause massed sighs of relief to those who haven’t heard these songs over the three EPs and a download that were released over the last few months.When Pixies first appeared in the late 1980s, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
She may only be 23, but Iggy Azalea got off to a good start with those of us a good decade older last month when the video accompanying her single “Fancy” - an homage to 90s teen comedy Clueless - debuted online. Nostalgia sells, of course: any idiot with access to the nightwear department at Primark, where right now pyjamas featuring Alicia Silverstone and the rest share shelf space with My Little Pony, could tell you that. But fans of the film will know that its imagery, if not its heart, is the perfect accompaniment to the stylish swagger the Australian rapper brings to the verses, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
From the balcony overlooking the mosh pit you get a good idea of how long a band has been going. Last night at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, The Men They Couldn’t Hang celebrated their 30th anniversary while a small kinetic cluster of mainly bald 50-year-olds pinged into one another like shiny billiard balls. A fiver says a sheepish accountant or two will have had some explaining to do this morning in A&E.The Men could and should have been contenders. For the second half of the Eighties, they were. Forged in the crucible of Thatcherism, they quickly established themselves as England’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Krai – Край – is employed in Russia to label tracts of land separating regions or marking borders. These liminal places each have their own name, defined limits and character, and have inspired the second solo album by the Brooklyn-based Olga Bell. An exotic musical travelogue through the nine Krais, Krai the album is delivered entirely in Russian.The music shifts from minimally arranged pieces drawing from Troika to melodies which could suit the balalaika. Orthodox religious chanting sits alongside Cossack melodies and the drumming of the Arctic-region Chuchki. There’s electronics, Read more ...