New music
Russ Coffey
One of the unwritten rules of pop music is that a surfeit of talent doesn’t necessarily lead to the most affecting tracks. The rhythmic complexity of Beck’s 2008 opus Modern Guilt, was, for instance, undeniably unemotional. And then there was his 2012 release, simply a book of sheet music called Song Reader. Morning Phase, however, is a different matter. As the hype and press releases rightly claim, it really does hark back to his most lovely work, 2002’s Sea Change.Like its predecessor this is not a record of exceptional moments, rather one of sustained ethereal meditation. Now, however, Read more ...
james.woodall
He cuts a dash, that man Cave. Very tall, gangly, with his idiosyncratic snub nose and upside-down-U-shaped hair, the Australian is a one-off. His growly music isn’t always easy to like. In his fury days with the Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds, he was a post-punk rock poet. He has, of course, oceans of fans. It goes without saying that they will be a-quiver at 20,000 Days on Earth (20,000 was the number of mortal days Cave had notched up three years ago when this documentary started: he’s now 57).You'd probably have to be pretty hard core to relish much of the twiddling and impro of the new Read more ...
Thembi Mutch
“Would we be able to prosecute the Vikings today, should we? I mean are there parallels between what the Nazis did by plundering art and gold, or what the German soldiers did who raped Norwegian women when they occupied Norway?” Silke Roeploeg might perhaps fit the Viking caricature: tall, blonde, physically fit, ruddy weathered cheeks, and smart. She is however German, and a lecturer on the Highland and Islands Nordic studies, which includes a component on Vikings. Now living on Shetland, Silke is philosophical about the controversy that the Vikings are still managing to cause, some Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s always difficult to know quite how seriously bands approach the things that distinguish between an album and a collection of songs: the naming, the sequencing, the artwork. For instance, I could say that “Life in the Sky” - the sprawling, six-minute epic that opens Fanfarlo’s new album - is the perfect microcosm of an album called Let’s Go Extinct: from the sounds it opens with, like whistles and whale song; to the melodic chaos the brass brings to its middle section; to the simplicity of its closing moments and the way that the song fades into nothingness. But it could just be that the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Kerri Chandler is quite simply one of the most revered figures in dance music, as much now as when he emerged from the New Jersey club scene onto the international stage nigh on a quarter of a century ago. True to the spirit of the disco, he has only ever released three albums in that time, but has made over 100 12” singles, and maybe twice that number of remixes of other people's work, as well as untold performances as one of the most consistently popular DJs in house music.His style is exceptionally musical, taking rich influences from soul and jazz and heavy on the use of “real” Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Reverend & the Makers are known for a sound that is characterised by a hotpot of indie pop, electronica and Madchester vibes with witty and pithy lyrics, delivered in a Yorkshire accent, that venture beyond the subjects of getting hammered and hanging out. Something like Kasabian with a raised IQ or Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip with a bit more swing about them.New album, ThirtyTwo, is a slightly different take on their sound, with added ska among other flavours, but it is still most certainly recognisable as John McClure and his band of musical renegades. “The Devil’s Radio” and “Nostalgia Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Strypes broke through initially with an amped-up version of the blues, akin to the sounds of the early Sixties London blues rock explosion that gave us the Rolling Stones. Tonight proved that they’ve since taken a Tardis through the decades - although no further than 1992 or so - but have kept fast hold of their smash’n’grab garage band ethos. Where bands such as Foals and Everything Everything explore futurist technology in a rather fussy, uninspiring manner, these Irish teenagers engage with the past in a way that’s visceral and hugely exciting.Clad in black suits with white shirts and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s easy, if you don’t live in London, to be dismissive of the capital’s endless miniature enclaves of snooty, self-satisfied indie hipsters. I certainly am. But sometimes they get it right. Hatcham Social, associates of Tim Burgess (of The Charlatans) and Faris Badwan (of The Horrors) are a case in point. Their third album is a lovely thing, lo-fi but full of restless, melancholic, creative spirit. That whole lost boy English indie thing was dead creative currency long before Barat & Doherty relentlessly finished it off, yet occasional bands still pop up and find new seams to mine Read more ...
joe.muggs
For those of a certain vintage, Lisa Stansfield's voice is woven into the fabric of memory. Of course there was her 1989 monster single “All Around the World” (“and ay-ay-ay-ay can't find my baby”) – but just as importantly, we first heard her earlier that year on Coldcut's monumental bit of starry-eyed acid house utopianism “People Hold On”, which has been sampled, bootlegged and repurposed so many times that the tiniest inflexions of her “give a little life, give a little love” refrain are as familiar as our own faces.Of course, she was a middle-of-the-road soul singer before that, and Read more ...
joe.muggs
If you're looking for good vibes, you could do worse than watch people who've queued up for a surprise show by a megastar finally getting through the doors, having paid only a tenner. The buzz on the way into the Shepherds Bush Empire last night, in fact, was a real tonic – people whooping, spontaneously singing, grinning inanely. A quite peculiar mix of celebrities – Nick Grimshaw, Cara Delevingne, Alan Yentob and George Clinton – all took to their seats looking as excited as the 3,000-odd standard punters. This was what fandom should be about, and it couldn't have started off the evening Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Fans of British psychedelic underground music of the Sixties and Seventies need read no further. This Twink is not the drummer from The Pretty Things and The Pink Fairies who was good mates with Syd Barrett all those years ago (and who is now known as Mohammed Abdullah, incidentally). That said, what’s going on with this Twink – Mike Langlie of Boston, Massachusetts - is oddball enough to be just as appealing, in small doses, to first-generation LSD freaks searching for something to send their brains into a spin.Langlie’s oeuvre is music made with toys and children’s instrumentation. If you Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Michael Bloomfield: From his Head to his Heart to his HandsMike Bloomfield was undoubtedly one of rock’s greatest and most distinctive guitarists. He was also wildly erratic and did much to undermine what others saw in him. He died at age 37 in 1981. He had been a drug addict and self-mythologist. The records he left behind were many, and he never landed in one band or place for long. Crucial to Bob Dylan turning his back on the acoustic, he was on stage with him when he went electric at Newport in 1965. His stinging tones helped define “Like a Rolling Stone”. Dylan told Bloomfield not Read more ...