New music
ellin.stein
Christened the Blues Brothers, Elwood and Jake’s first public appearance was as the warm-up act Lorne Michaels used to put the studio audience in a receptive mood before the show started. The audience became so warmed up that in April 1978, Michaels put the Blues Brothers on the actual broadcast, backed up by the SNL band. A contract with Atlantic Records, the label of several of the artists the Brothers emulated, materialised in short order. Belushi and Aykroyd found themselves in a dreamlike state where the slightest creative whim could be realised as a viable commercial product (indeed, it Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The Roma have always existed on the margins: by choice, as they are nomads, but also through prejudice, as they and their outsider status evokes the threat of the unfamiliar. The brilliant gypsy clarinet players of Istanbul, cousins of the virtuosi of klezmer and Balkan wedding music, have entertained at parties for centuries. The best known, Selim Sesler, Barbaros Erköse and Mustafa Kandarili, may be admirable musicians, but, anxious to please the bourgeoisie, they have tailored their native fury to the needs of the Turkish nightclub.The Turkish clarinet player Cüneyt Sepetçi is something Read more ...
fisun.guner
Leonard Cohen sang, somewhat indiscreetly, about Janis Joplin “giving head” on his unmade bed, Bob Dylan penned a song to his hero Woody Guthrie, and Don McLean famously sang “the day the music died” about Buddy Holly. The list of pop tributes to pop icons – whether the subject is a distant hero, a dead lover or a good friend – is long. If one were to compile a list of all the songs written about Elvis that list alone would exceed the number below (as it is, I’ve pushed the boat out by including 4 Elvis-inspired songs among the 14, including one penned by Clive James during his folk music Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Sophisticated Boom Boom!! – The Shadow Morton StoryWithout Shadow Morton, Amy Winehouse could not have made Back to Black. The songs the enigmatic sonic wizard wrote and produced for The Shangri-Las in the mid Sixties were integral to what made Back to Black tick. Amazingly, Sophisticated Boom Boom!! – The Shadow Morton Story is the first career-spanning collection of Morton’s work. For that alone, it would be, at the least, exciting. But with its massive, well-illustrated booklet, the involvement of and interviews with Morton – who died in February this year, before he Read more ...
Adrian Dannatt
The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has been sometimes dubbed the "Glyndebourne of America" due to the charming garden picnics enjoyed by patrons during the sizzling Missouri summer season. But that title also suggests the company's daring international programming. Since 1976 Opera Theatre has hosted 22 world premieres and 23 American premieres, almost certainly the highest percentage of new work of any American company. The bold strategy reaches its apotheosis with the global debut of Champion, a specially commissioned new work from jazz maestro Terence Blanchard.Champion is the first of a Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Somewhere round about 10 years ago the concept of “folktronica” settled down to become a relatively stable area of music. Fringe its appeal may have generally been, but it incubated some major talents who are still making great music, and for better or worse primed general music fans' ears for the sounds of folk and thus arguably laid the ground for the monstrous success of Mumford & Sons.This year has seen a subtle resurgence in the sound, with artists affiliated to the first wave of folktronica like Tunng, The Memory Band, Colleen and CocoRosie all making extremely fine albums. But Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It used to be said that singer-songwriting was one style of music that would never go out of fashion. In the past few years, however, a glut of insipid twanging – Ben Howard and James Morrison, hold up your hands – has been sending many dedicated music fans elsewhere. The common complaint is that a genre that once brought so much real soul-baring is now reduced to drippy navel-gazing. And this backlash is a real shame for Jon Byrne. He may sound, on occasion, a bit like Paolo Nutini but he’s considerably more interesting.But what makes Byrne intriguing is not necessarily what his record Read more ...
peter.quinn
The great jazz singers are also the great storytellers. Last night, listening to Cassandra Wilson sing “Wichita Lineman”, that single, devastating couplet - "And I need you more than want you/And I want you for all time" - conjured up an individual's entire life story. Seamlessly traversing genres in fresh and creative ways, performing a set that juxtaposed Cesária Évora's “Angola” with a completely impromptu “A Foggy Day”, the Jackson, Mississippi vocalist, musician, songwriter and producer confirmed her own compelling storytelling gift.When Wilson took to the stage after a scene-setting Read more ...
James Williams
When The Golden Age of Apocalypse, the first LP by Stephen Bruner, the American musician better known as Thundercat, was released in 2011, it was a revelation. Co-produced by Flying Lotus and taking its cues from electronica, prog, pop and funk, its sublime jazz sound united head-bobbing musos, fellow musicians (Bruner counts Dr Dre, Erykah Badu and Odd Future among his fans and collaborators) and critics.To celebrate the release of his equally inspiring follow up, Apocalypse, Bruner and his band took to the stage at XOYO in London’s Shoreditch for a show that was remarkable in both its Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There is something eminently smug and punchable about Robin Thicke. Born into a showbiz dynasty of US TV celebrities (media geek fact: his dad also composed the theme to Diff’rent Strokes), he appears to have lived a cossetted existence, writing slick, plastic sex songs for a multitude of stars from an early age while heavily involved in the epic artifice of TV talent shows. What’s not to loathe? Except that you don’t get signed to The Neptunes’ label or have Jay-Z work with you on the basis of dilettante dabbling. No, Thicke, punchable or no, can navigate his way around a pop song.His latest Read more ...
Joe Muggs
When Tunng started out in 2005, they were a peculiar proposition. Treading a fine line between Heath Robinson ramshackle and meticulous high-tech, ancient and hyper-modern, bone percussion and glitchy electronic sparkles, they certainly deserved the then-popular term “folktronica”. Though their melodies were unerringly catchy, their lyrics were so out-there, their lineup so unorthodox and their sound so psychedelic it was never likely they'd be more than a cult act.So why, last night, did they bring nothing to mind so much as Fleetwood Mac or Paul McCartney's Wings? Their new, fifth, album Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Watching Adam Stafford at work can only be described as magical. Thanks to his ingenious use of loop and effects pedals, the Falkirk-born songwriter can spin intricate, layered compositions using nothing but his voice and a couple of bars on guitar. At last week’s Glasgow launch show for his latest album, he ended the night with a ten-minute monster from Awnings, a 2009 experimental a capella album. Cue an audience literally stunned by a noise as wild and intense - and yet, as strangely controlled - as that from a full orchestra.It stands to reason that some of the immediate impact of Read more ...