New music
Russ Coffey
On the cover of Bye Bye 17, Har Mar Superstar – the creation of musician Sean Tillman – is still wearing his infamous underpants. Inside, however, his music has moved on. By trading Har Mar's former Prince stylings for influences ranging from Sam Cooke to Curtis Mayfield, Tillman has found a whole new sound palette to play with. And he's getting completely stuck in.This change of direction makes for a riotously entertaining listen, and a very satisfying one too. Behind Tillman’s personas – he also performs as Sean Na Na and with the “alternative supergroup” Gayngs – there has always been Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The new South Bank Show has glided into its second season with a seemingly effortless profile of multi-hyphenate Tim Minchin. In case we’ve forgotten what exactly we admire him for these days – so varied has been his decade-long career been, through satire, rock, musical comedy, stage performance, to co-creator of the RSC transfer-spectacular Matilda that's now storming Broadway – then this was a good reminder.Self-deprecation may be one of his fortes (not that he doesn’t excel at deprecating others), but Minchin proved a thoughtful guide to his achievements to date, in that beguilingly Read more ...
peter.quinn
OK, so you've given your copies of Rod's It Had To Be You and Robbie's Swing When You're Winning a few listens (released many, many years ago, the latter is still top of the iTunes jazz albums chart in a gazillion countries). You've memorised the words and now you quite fancy giving “Summertime” a bit of a go. A touch of rubato here, a judicious tweak of the melody line there and, hey, you're singing jazz! Er, not quite.As shown in last night's masterclass by the inimitable Kurt Elling, "singing jazz" requires a number of things: the desiderata would include developing your own approach to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s too obvious just to take the Canadian charm-monkey down in a bile-fest, so where to begin? He looks a bit peaky on the album cover and peakier still on the first page of the CD insert booklet (not that anyone under 40 listens to CDs). He’s lost weight. He used to be chubbier with a hint of that blank-eyed M.O.R.-damaged look which Daniel O’Donnell perfected and which grannies adore. Bublé was never just a geriatric sex daydream, though. His easy, TV chat-show demeanour is beloved of a much wider range of women, young and old. There, rather than his music, lies the secret of his success. Read more ...
bruce.dessau
When I suggested reviewing Ian McCulloch's new album, our glorious editor was under the impression that it was just a live collection of ancient tracks. It is actually a double album – mainly old Bunnymen beauties on the self-explanatory Orchestral Reworkings from the Union Chapel plus a newish studio album,Pro Patria Mori, which had a low-key release in 2012 funded by fans. An understandable misunderstanding, as even the press release foregrounds the live album. Whatever Ian McCulloch's future holds, it is probably his illustrious early Eighties past that will be of most interest to his Read more ...
joe.muggs
We're extremely happy to be able to offer a free download of this live track by New York collective Mice Parade to mark the release of their seventh album, Candela, today. In its six minutes, this version of "Couches & Carpets" encapsulates much of the diversity that has made Mice Parade a cult act over the past decade - from indie introspection to expansive post-rock guitars, jazz-funk grooves to melodies and techniques influenced by anagramatically eponymous band leader Adam Pierce's wide research as an ethnomusicologist. In last week's review of the album, Thomas H Green found Read more ...
joe.muggs
In six and a half years of existence, SBTV has redefined what youth culture broadcasting can be. It began as nothing more than a YouTube channel where Jamal Edwards would put up videos he had filmed of his favourite grime MCs – but his natural ambition and charm ensured it kept expanding from that base.Covering sounds that were just starting to form the basis of a new British pop music, Edwards not only built an admirable contact book, but demonstrated an understanding of branding which turned SBTV into the viewing destination for “urban” music fans – more so than any terrestrial or cable Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Remember the Brass Band Battle of a couple years ago? The one that pitted Romania’s Fanfare Ciocarlia vs Serbia’s Boban & Marko Markovic Orkestar on CD and stage? The concert at London’s Koko was great fun, less a "battle" and more a good humoured showcase for two great Gypsy brass bands to tear it up.Balkan Brass Battle was such a success it toured for two years. Then Boban pulled his Orkestar out. He has now broadened the brass battle by lining up against Mexico’s Banda Estrellas de Sinaloa de German Lizarraga. Mexico and the Balkans share a popular brass band tradition that stretches Read more ...
joe.muggs
Some 20 years ago, a series of albums called Artificial Intelligence on WARP Records aimed to promote techno as home-listening music. They made up a frequently sublime collection, but unfortunately the word “intelligence” in their title was picked up by a movement through the 1990s that became known, horrendously, as “intelligent dance music” (IDM) and tended to the belief that intricacy and awkwardness made music somehow superior to that made with more sensuous or hedonistic aims in mind.Thankfully, in the wake of dubstep in the 2000s, the experimental and the danceable began to overlap Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sandie Shaw: Sandie/Me/Love Me Please Love MeThe former Sandra Goodrich probably would have emerged in the Sixties as an embodiment of the era. She could have been a model, actress or a TV presenter. But it was music that found her, and it suited her a treat. The reissue of her first three albums – each supplemented by the relevant singles and B-sides – is a powerful reminder of her potency. When The Smiths brought her on board for “Hand in Glove”, it further stressed her pivotal role in British culture.Her naturalness obscured the fact that she was a great singer. Ease of delivery did Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Stately" is the best adjective for Françoise Hardy’s similarly measured follow-up to 2010’s La pluie sans parapluie. Fifty-three years on from her first release, there is no need for Hardy to break new ground or hare off on a tangent, but her regular release schedule suggests a contentment with sticking to what she knows best. That stretches to the creation of the album itself, where the lyrics are mostly hers but all the music is composed by others. As a pioneering singer-songwriter, it is sad this aspect of her creative self has been surrendered. Writing books seems her focus now.Despite Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A renaissance man from Texas? Hell yeah. Loosely pegged as "country singer" when he struck out for Nashville in the late Seventies, where he survived on a series of odd jobs before landing himself a songwriting job with a music publisher, the mature Steve Earle has blossomed creatively in all directions. Were he to use business cards, which I can't imagine somehow, he could justifiably bill himself as singer, songwriter, actor, playwright, novelist and political activist.He made a brilliant start with his first full-length album Guitar Town (1986), a scintillating mix of rockabilly, country, Read more ...