New music
Lisa-Marie Ferla
With that warm, slightly husky voice of hers - not unlike that of an old friend at the other end of the telephone - Suzanne Vega has always been one of those singers I’d happily listen to reading the Yellow Pages. To be honest, there are parts of the often mystical, always curious Tales From the Queen of Pentacles that would probably have been easier to understand if she had done, even if the names in Vega’s directory turned out to be as ill-fitting as Mother Teresa, the Knight of Wands and Macklemore.It’s an interesting one to unwrap, this first collection of new material in seven years, Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Torn between mainstream adulation and the select approval of the folk community, Seth Lakeman has recently seemed unsure of who his audience are. Propelled into the big time on the back of the Mercury nomination for his 2004 album Kitty Jay (recorded in his kitchen for £300), Lakeman then released two albums aimed squarely at the Tesco’s CD aisle (if not at impressing critics), before returning to his roots with the 2012 solo recording Tales from the Barrel House, celebrating the vanishing artisans of his native Devon. He seems now to be aiming for both audiences at once. The concept of Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Pete Seeger has had a vast number of tributes since he died aged 94 on Monday. That might seem surprising for an artist whose real heyday was over 50 years ago. Part of the reason no doubt was the dignified and steadfast aura of a man of the people and heartfelt activist. Along with his friend Woody Guthrie, he ushered in a period in American music when after the initial flush of rock'n'roll had subsided it became interesting to sing pop songs that were not mere romantic slush, but often had a political message. His mission was also to re-imagine the folk music of the steppes of America. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A funny thing happened to English pop acts when they embraced LSD in the 1960s. Whereas the original Californian musical tripsters suddenly started emphasising the cosmic nature of reality – think of The Byrds’s beautiful ‘5D’ – the English discovered a weird pastoral idyll, a Looking Glass world of village life through the lens of psilocybin. From The Kinks – who, admittedly, were halfway there already – to Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, whimsy and teapots and butterflies and bicycles were where it was at. In the 1980s, there was a strain of wilfully obscure indie that aimed again for this Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Finland’s Jaakko Eino Kalevi, who played his debut British show last November, heads up theartsdesk’s latest regular round-up of what’s come down from the north. A spellbinding display of individualistic pop, the London outing coincided with the arrival of his first non-Finnish release, the Dreamzone EP.Deadpan and stood at his ancient synth, he was accompanied by a drummer and sax player. The rhythms rarely deviated from the beat of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. The hollow sax evoked Chris Rea or the white-bread soul-pop of Hall & Oates. The whole enfolded like dub. Kalevi barely Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Once upon a time, there was an assumption that the DJs and remixers who emerged in the late 1980s would kill off touring bands like Depeche Mode. As it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth and 34 years since they first got together, Basildon’s finest are not only still providing remixers with plenty of raw material for their craft, but they are reproducing their recreations in the live arena. Last night, Depeche Mode not only played classic after classic in their original recorded form, but also a couple of re-arrangements by way of Goldfrapp’s understated reworking of “Halo”, Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Judith Owen has form for hanging around with the hairiest of musicians. Her husband is, of course, one Harry Shearer AKA Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls. Lately, however, Owen has been hanging out with a trio, who, although as hirsute as Smalls, prefer their music a little more on the smooth side. Russ Kunkel, Lee Sklar (pictured below) and Waddy Wachtel are the main collaborators on her forthcoming album Ebb & Flow and have worked with the likes of Carole King, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne. Now Owen has brought them back together.Their presence gives Ebb & Read more ...
joe.muggs
A quiet revolution has been underway over the last 10 or 15 years. As digital synthesis becomes more and more available and powerful, as does the ability to manipulate the sound of real wood-and-metal instruments inside a computer, so the boundaries between “electronic” and “organic” have been eroded to the point where they are now meaningless.While some of the artists doing that have been those who parade their technological nous – the Autechres and Flying Lotuses of this world, as well as more academic experimenters – a lot of innovation in this area has been taking place in the less Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The pared-down beauty and integrity of this remarkable new album is all the more exciting given the quantity of stylistic clutter typically associated with its two principal genres, jazz and soul. Showing excellent taste and artistic self-confidence, McFarlane has stripped away warbling vocal ornaments, stale generic phrasing and redundant backing tracks, trusting the assured, true-grained timbre of her voice to carry the emotional weight of her potent and original writing.A handful of these songs are surely destined to endure in the repertoire. They balance McFarlane’s exposed voice and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Dory Langdon: My Heart is a HunterAs a singer-songwriter, Dory Previn’s reputation rests on the extraordinary quartet of albums she made for United Artists in the opening years of the Seventies. This, her debut album, was issued in 1958. Commenting on his reaction to hearing “The Lady With The Braid” from 1971’s Mythical Kings & Iguanas for the first time, Jarvis Cocker said “I remember very vividly first hearing this record. I had moved to London. I was living in this squat and I was trying to put a curtain rail up. I was listening to the radio and it’s one of those moments where Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
What is the point of Sheryl Crow? She’s been around for decades but to what purpose? What makes her art worthwhile? She seems a liberal sort, does good things for decent causes, keeps interesting company, but everything she touches turns to US FM radio easy. She likes the smell of rock’n’roll but never looks to have mired herself in it which, making the kind of music she does, country-tinged blues-rock, rather misses the point. She’s a nice, pretty, all-American cheerleader who’s ended up centre stage via hard work, networking and shopping mall anthems such as “All I Wanna Do” and, God help Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The best thing about Warpaint is their rhythm section. The all-female LA quartet have received critical plaudits for both their albums, wisely releasing their latest eponymous collection in the dead zone of January, maximizing media attention (why don’t more bands do this? It was the making of the Scissor Sisters back in 2004). The foursome are determinedly un-showbiz, letting their music do the talking and dealing in tasty power-femme sound-bites. In this they are admirable but their music, a woozy amalgam of the Cocteau Twins and grunge, lacks actual songs (although there are three catchy Read more ...