It's sad, isn't it, that we still live in a world where the more something sounds like a great party, the less “serious” it is considered? Think about how much deep meaning is attached by how many to, say, the portentous mitherings of Thom Yorke, then try to imagine that degree of beard-rubbing analysis being given over to this non-stop blast of joyous grooves that have rocked festival stages, dance clubs and hip hop shows over the summer. Not gonna happen, is it?It's a shame, because there is so much depth in those grooves. Their rowdy, complex sonorities come out of the unbroken living Read more ...

Tigran Hamasyan is a brilliant jazz pianist who is clearly on the rise – for one thing, like many a star before him, he has dropped his surname, and is now, according to his latest record The Fable, simply Tigran. When I meet him in London, he tells me one reason he became addicted to the acoustic piano as a child was that there were so many blackouts in his native Gyumri in Armenia, and it was something he could play by candlelight. When he was 18 months old, in December 1988, there was a terrible earthquake in the region. When the Soviet Union collapsed the next year, Armenia went to war Read more ...

It is not exactly Rock 'n' Roll Babylon, that's for sure. When Mercury Prize-winning quartet Alt-J assembled onstage at the Electric Ballroom last night it was more like a group of cool-looking choirboys gathering for practice with the vicar than music's hottest properties playing the final lap-of-honour gig of their current tour. After a modest "thank you" to the audience from guitar-cradling vocalist Joe Newman they were off and running.This is a venue where I'd previously seen The Clash at full cannonball tilt and Nick Cave in total self-destructive gonzo mode and Alt-J were never going to Read more ...

Crystal Castles are a perverse and, consequently, exciting outfit. The Canadian duo of Ethan Kath and Alice Glass, producer and singer, front it out to their public in the manner of venom-fuelled nihilist industrial punks. At their concerts their music becomes a squall of noisy attack, the band encouraging riotous behaviour and Glass mutating into a snarling dervish. As interviewees they are the height of bored rudeness, especially Glass. It’s as if Crystal Castles wish they were Skinny Puppy or Ministry or someone truly gnarly, yet their lovely, doomy albums are in a whole different league Read more ...

Herbie Hancock has never stood still. He hit the ground running, joining Miles Davis's second great quintet on piano in 1963 at the age of just 23, and from that moment on demonstrated a Stakhanovite work ethic and appetite for the new which saw him on the crest of wave after wave of revolutionary music.From bop and soul-inflected grooves of the 1960s, through jazz fusion in the early 1970s, the solid funk of his band the Headhunters later in the decade to his engagement with electro and hip hop going into the 1980s, he continuously produced music that appealed to both the intellect and the Read more ...

Before approaching any Céline Dion album, a number of obstacles have to be navigated: the anticipation that over-singing is on the horizon, or the knowledge of her Trilby-like relationship to Svengali René Angélil. Most of all though, it’s the fact that she’s so far off the cool scale she might as well be from the Planet Naff rather than Québec. And the album’s slightly cheesy chick lit-style graphics don’t help. But life is strewn with moments which confound. Sans Attendre, her first French-language album for five years, isn’t going to stop the world turning. But it is good.In general, Sans Read more ...

The Blue Nile: A Walk Across The Rooftops, HatsGraeme ThomsonThe Blue Nile occupy a unique spot in the musical landscape. Formed in 1980 by Glasgow University graduates Paul Buchanan, Paul Joseph Moore and Robert Bell, four albums in 30 years suggests a certain neurotic creative sensibility which resulted in a pretty slim legacy but served the music well.From their first single – 1981’s “I Love This Life”, included on these expanded reissues – to their last album High, in 2004, a dedicated and deliberate artistic ethos has driven the music. Aesthetically, there is something immensely pleasing Read more ...

A certain type of pop star takes time to lose their baggage. Once upon a time it was hard to enjoy The Monkees’ "Daydream Believer" or The Osmonds’ "Crazy Horses" because the bands were mired neck deep in record company shittiness and (as they didn’t call it then) corporate brand marketing. Thus it was with Robbie Williams a generation later. Some will never get over the fact he was “the cheeky one” from Take That, a crappy boy band who eventually came good with the critics. Nevertheless, Williams is likeable, he has showbiz genes tempered with unpredictability and a fascinating, unlikely Read more ...

There’s something admirable about the way that The Civil Wars have become quietly, unassumingly massive; packing mid-sized venues the length of the UK and chalking up over 100,000 copies of their debut album sold since its March release on these shores. The double Grammy-award winning, Nashville-based duo seem genuinely appreciative of a rapturous reception, and endearingly humble despite their considerable success.If proximity be enough to transfer some of the band’s considerable good fortune, perhaps by the time their own headline tour rolls around in the new year we’ll see The Lumineers ( Read more ...

Aerosmith’s reign as kings of the power ballad seems to be over. Their latest single is such syrupy tosh you can hardly believe it's them. But it is just a single, right. What of the rest? Songwriting collaborator Marti Frederiksen says the album's also full of "rockers". He was part responsible for the rather nice “Jaded” a few jears back, and has also written with Def Leppard and Motley Crue. So surely there's plenty of the melodic pop-rock they do so well?Unfortunately not. It gets off to a bad start with a silly voiceover that tells you to surrender your emotion. But if only the album had Read more ...

“A hurricane didn’t stop me getting here,” shouted Barry from Philadelphia, and there were plenty of hard core World Party fans for whom last night at the Albert Hall was a big deal concert – the first proper tour in 10 years, coming on the back of a brick-like five-CD box of unreleased material called Arkeology.Karl Wallinger (who is for all intents and purposes World Party) had a good excuse – he suffered an aneurysm a decade a ago and for a while couldn’t speak. Last night, though, he was in fine voice. Wallinger never was starry, and certainly doesn’t look it – imagine Griff Rhys Jones as Read more ...

Sunderland-born Dave Stewart has embraced the life of a wandering troubadour virtually since he was born. He had a record deal with folk-rockers Longdancer at the start of the Seventies, though he didn't start to enjoy commercial success until the end of the decade, when he was with The Tourists. They're possibly best remembered for their cover of the Dusty Springfield hit "I Only Want To Be With You", but more importantly, it was the band which brought Stewart together with Annie Lennox.As Eurythmics, Stewart and Lennox became one of the Eighties' biggest acts, engulfing the planet with a Read more ...