New music
Thomas H. Green
I have to be honest - I didn’t go to very much of Nova. Suffice to say I’d put my name down to review it and then fate threw a house move into the mix in the same week. Nevertheless, relatively undaunted, I planned to head down to the Pulborough site in West Sussex, only 20 miles from where I live, taking my two daughters along. Then I lost my driving license. And then it started raining and didn’t stop.While I’ve no truck whatsoever with the British media’s obsession with festivals being a misery of mud, dragging children to them in bad weather can be very unrewarding (especially, I reckoned Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The first thing that strikes you is the voice. At once coarse and warm, like the creak of the stairs of your childhood home as it settles in at night, Meursault’s Neil Pennycook sounds like a man with more than a few stories to tell. Of course it helps that, instrumentation-wise, Something for the Weakened is one of those musical "progressions" which sees the band abandon the programmed beats that punctuated earlier recordings in favour of a more conventional sound that knows when to play it sparse and when to swell, filling out beautiful melodies that top the five-minute mark in places. But Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It could have been a cow lowing in the distance, the sound drifting across a barren landscape. Its tone transformed after echoing through hillsides and ravines. Actually, it was Karl Seglem blowing into the horn of a goat. Suddenly, he stopped and began wordlessly chanting. The other two musicians on stage at St Luke's kept their heads down and continued providing the sonic wash knitting together this collaboration between the classical, jazz and uncategorisable.Seglem’s diversion into the animalistic was short, but it helped define last night. The union of Christian Wallumrød, Seglem and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Despite the tee-hee title, the promise of a journey from “high culture to high camp” and the nudge-and-wink comment that the falsetto is “able to transport us to heaven knows where”, Alan Yentob’s examination of male singers who’ve chosen to “falsify their voice” was a thoughtful, though scattershot rumination on men who choose to take their voice beyond its natural range.Making the choice to embrace the high register isn’t just about potentially inviting accusations of effeminacy, it can bring self-inflicted physical damage too. Not being equipped to go high, grown men can suffer. Images Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Once upon a time – six years ago - there was “nu rave” and it was immediately taken to pieces as a media construct and trashed. Fair enough, it was, but then so was Britpop and some people are still crapping on about that a decade and a half later. At least nu rave plugged in some whacky synths and psychedelic attitude. Such grumbles aside, Van She, named after frontman Matt Van Schie, were and are four Australians who hooked into the scene that the media called “nu rave”. No-one involved but The Klaxons (briefly) embraced the term. Then again, British punks didn’t embrace that term either, Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The first time I interviewed Marc Almond back in the late 1980s he had a pet snake with him, just one of the many things that sets him apart from today's stars. These days the only reptiles one sees around chart-toppers are the publicists. Almond has been part of the pop furniture for three decades but it was still something of a surprise to discover that he was celebrating his 55th birthday last night. Tempus fugit and all that. Or as the still-nimble black-clad crooner said to his mostly similarly-aged audience, "we are all in it together, dear".A decade ago Almond might have celebrated by Read more ...
howard.male
English producer Will "Quantic" Holland has brilliantly captured the sound of this Colombian big band who came together solely to make an album that represents the best of Colombian tropical music past and present. For capturing is all you really have to be able to do when the standard of musicianship is so high and the sheer joy of playing so apparent.Colombian styles such as cumbia, gaita, porro and champeta (“ondatrópica” is the overarching name for these styles) are all well represented but not in a dull, archival way. Every track is taut and springy with life and buoyed up by both new up Read more ...
theartsdesk
Various Artists: Sound System - The Story of Jamaican MusicThomas H Green This is lovely, a box-set celebration of Jamaican music, marking 50 years of the country’s independence. In a brooks-no-argument fashion, it reminds the forgetful that the Caribbean island punches so, so far above its geographical weight that gobs remain fully smacked over 30 years after the death of the man who gave reggae a global profile in the first place, Bob Marley (who is, incidentally, absent). Aside from the music, though, Sound System’s eight CDs arrive in a chunky 12 x 12in box that contains a coffee table Read more ...
garth.cartwright
New Orleans brass remains the elemental party sound of the Crescent City with groups of young black men providing a bright, swaggering soundtrack to jazz funerals and second line parades. Originally, the brass bands grew out of working men’s clubs that acted as de facto unions in the then segregated south. The likes of Louis Armstrong (and many others) got an early musical initiation via playing on the street and even today it's possible to visit New Orleans and find brass bands busking in the French Quarter or, if more established, crowding onto a stage in a local bar.The Hot 8 Brass Band Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Despite his previous nine albums, Duke Special may still be best known for his “hobo Tim Minchin” look, and the lavish songs “Our Love Goes Deeper” and “Last Night I Nearly Died”. For those on the lookout for more of the same action, however, the new album may prove something of a disappointment: Oh Pioneer is actually a much more subdued creature. Yet, by shedding the melody-rich “chamber pop” mantle, Peter Wilson has, in fact, arrived at a sound that's potentially more mainstream. So what’s it like, and will it sell?This is an album that, when in a reflective mood, you can get lost inOne Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The Queen made a rare visit to Glasgow yesterday. Now as luck would have it Liz 'n' Philip did too, apparently driving by my office on their way to George Square for afternoon tea and a quick chorus of long-to-reign-over-us (at least until 2014), and in the process lending this opening paragraph a rare note of topicality. However I'd be very surprised if the pair of them received quite so rapturous a welcome, or experienced as many people take an icy command to "bow down to me" so literally, as Shirley Manson on her triumphant return to the Barrowlands.Such is the fickle nature of pop music Read more ...
Nick Levine
Compared to previous Dirty Projectors records, Swing Lo Magellan is a walk in the park with a piece of cake to follow. Then again, previous Dirty Projectors records include a so-called "glitch opera" about Don Henley, a "re-imagining" of a punk album that Dave Longstreth hadn't heard in 15 years, and an EP featuring a 10-piece chamber music collective that Longstreth put together and then named "First Orchestral Society for the Preservation of the Orchestra."Their last album, 2009's Bitte Orca, found the singer-songwriter-producer and his willing minstrels edging towards the straightforward. Read more ...