There must be something quite frustrating about being a Stroke in 2013, assuming you just want to get on with the business of making music without constantly being reminded that you are part of a band once labeled the biggest in the world by the music press. It’s no wonder they aren’t giving interviews around the release of their fifth album, even if they’ve now pretty much outlived every magazine that once put them on the cover. The thing is, the Strokes have eschewed the simplicity of their debut on every release since, which is why the new wave-y synths and 80s influences on their latest Read more ...

You will have to excuse my solipsism but I can find no way into this review without my own preoccupations butting rudely in. Music journalists sometimes end up reviewing albums utterly disconnected to their own interests, background and musical tastes. Some overcome this with ease, finding their inner dispassionate judge, while others find a meaty angle that adheres closely to their own perspectives, then pile in. I am closer in tone to the latter. However, it would be unfair and boring to play that game with Suede.I don’t like them and never have, yet they were ahead of the pack, a vanguard Read more ...

Bernard Herrmann: Vertigo and Music From the Films of Alfred HitchcockGreat film soundtrack music can have a tough time being accepted as thus. There’s the test of time: does the music continue resonating? Is the music a sympathetic foil for the visuals? Can it live away from the screen and still create its atmosphere? The questions are endless, but the music of Bernard Herrmann will always pass any test. With Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo declared the greatest film ever in last year’s Sight and Sound poll, Herrmann’s music for it was, by association, also cast as an all-time great. Previously, Read more ...

You really don't need the context on this, do you? Event album, comeback, cheesy title, blah blah – it's all there splattered all over the internet if you really want it. I'll just cut to the chase and say: I love Justin Timberlake's music, and I'm very, very relieved to say I love this album, for a number of reasons. And rather than try and analyse anything too much, I'll just list them.It doesn't try too hard. There's nothing that explodes in your face with hyper-pop orgasms like "Cry me a River" or "Sexy Back", and neither should there be. This wouldn't be dignified for a movie star, keen Read more ...

Regular readers of theartsdesk will know that we have a lot of time for Volker Bertelmann, the composer-pianist-producer better known as Hauschka. Adapting styles from rigorous minimalism through romantic compositions to club-inspired electronica, he has ploughed his own furrow through postclassical and leftfield music.So we were very happy when, to trail a show he's doing tomorrow night at London's Bishopsgate Institute with regular collaborator violinist Hilary Hahn, and his new remix album, he offered us the first showing of this 38 minute concert recorded in Nairobi, Kenya last year Read more ...

TWenty years in operation, Minnesota’s Low could have comfortably chosen cruise control. Instead, for their 10th album they’ve looked to their own past and taken a step back from the Crazy Horse-influences which coloured their last album C’mon. Bringing Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in as their producer seems to have reintroduced Low to an earlier form of themselves. Their new album was recorded at Wilco’s Chicago studio. Alan Sparhawk has said that hearing Tweedy’s work with Mavis Staples helped him and his Low and life partner Mimi Parker decide to make the journey south-east from their home town of Read more ...

Rick Redbeard has a pirate’s name and a voice like deep, dark water. Behind the colourful alter ego stands (or, as was the case last night, sits) Rick Anthony, singer of The Phantom Band, the Scottish six-piece whose two albums – Checkmate Savage and The Wants – have recently stretched the admittedly painfully limited parameters of contemporary rock music to thrilling extremes.The Phantom Band's sound is a manic tangle of folk, krautrock, doo-wop, post-rock, operatic excess and electro-pop kitsch. Anthony is not nearly as ambitious or eclectic when it comes to his own music, but the results Read more ...

There was a common theme to overheard discussions about Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. Whether in cinema doorways, school playgrounds or pubs, the consensus seemed to be that it laid out Tolkien’s tale in a suitably epic fashion and was no less a feat than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And yet, and yet… because we’d seen it all before – the silhouetted convoy traipsing over pan-shot New Zealand landscapes, the wizards, orcs and elves - because we’d seen it all before the experience was unexpectedly anticlimactic. Thus it is with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s seventh album. It does what it does Read more ...

Another session of Peter, Joe, some amazing records and some musing on their whys and wherefores - originally broadcast live on NTS Radio out of London's fashionable Dalston.This time around we touch on how humans imitate technology and vice versa (with reference to autotune and Wilko Johnson), on the inspiration for Paul Simon lyrics, and on how retro-ism can be the freshest thing around. The music covers everything from prog-funk to raging Arabic dubstep, country balladry to Amazonian electro-pop. Tune in, turn on, you know the rest... Track list:Colleen – Push the Boat Onto the Sand ( Read more ...

What fire and grace on display last night at what he and we assume will be Wilko Johnson’s final London gig. It’s been a while since ticket touts were out in force outside one of his gigs (£200 for you, sir) although his career has been floating upward in the last couple of years, partly due to Julien Temple’s excellent documentary Oil City Confidential. We came to pay affectionate tribute to one of the great guitar stylists, who announced a couple of months ago that he had terminal cancer.Most bands playing material from 40 years ago are going through the motions and are basically Read more ...

If you want a jolting snapshot of how British pop culture has changed in the last three decades, take a look at the clip below of Billy Bragg singing "Between The Wars" on Top of the Pops in 1985. Even if the old Savile-anchored singles showcase was still around, can one imagine a contemporary singer having a mainstream hit with such a political song today? It makes you want to despair.Billy Bragg's 13th studio album, Tooth & Nail, seems to suggest that he is similarly troubled by the modern world. Despite their constant threat of nuclear annihilation, somehow the mid-Eighties suddenly Read more ...

A crowd of men and younger women in full burkahs gathers, bewildered by the sight: an African woman, in West African “Mumu” (khaftan) and a covered head, playing Ghazals (Islamic calls to prayer). Accompanied by an acoustic guitar, a clear voice, sitting on a café terrazza, Nawal transports us: until it is broken. “How dare you use the name of Allah in a song?!” cries out a dishevelled street vendor, visibly upset. “But you use keyboards in your praise of Allah” she retorts calmly.It is 1pm, several hours before the Sauti Za Busara festival is about to begin. From the 12th-century Omani fort Read more ...