New music
Kieron Tyler
Becoming reacquainted with what was originally titled Westlake in 1987 is a pleasure. Yes, at his own measured pace, David Westlake has issued great albums since then and his Eighties and Nineties band The Servants have been the subject of various archive releases. It is not as though he has vanished. But any reminder of his flair as a songwriter is welcome.Originally a mini-LP, Westlake is now retitled D87, resequenced, appended by four tracks recorded for a contemporaneous BBC session and a couple of previously unheard demos. The augmented reissue doesn’t use the original sleeve image but Read more ...
Cheri Amour
Much like her pop predecessor Avril Lavigne, musical snobs over the age of 25 are likely to be suspicious of Olivia Rodrigo. As the 2003 BBC review of seminal angst classic Let Go (every millennial woman’s mirror to her teens) posited, ”She’s only 17. She’s pretty. She’s sold a zillion albums already. She must be rubbish, right?” The difference between those two decades is staggering.While Lavigne might’ve been questioned about her right to the pop-punk throne, high-flying women in music have revived the industry over the last few years. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are expected to generate about Read more ...
Tim Cumming
One day, someone will compile a full illustrated history of Rolling Stones press conferences, going right back to Mick and Keith in 1964 buying a couple of pints in a pub in Denmark Street for journalists from the NME and Melody Maker – both now in the dustbin of history – and telling them, “here’s our album, have a listen” and leaving them to it.“The reviews were mixed – but it sold well,” laughs Jagger from the stage of the Hackney Empire, some 59 years later. Keith and Ronnie are sat either side of him, the three of them ineffably cool, relaxed, funny, and absolutely within their element, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Chemical Brothers are unstoppable. Their live shows are a guaranteed monster good time, redolent of proper old-school rave-ups, but with visual tech from some freaky eye-boggling future. Their last album, 2019’s No Geography, was a total belter. Their latest, their tenth, is also a total belter. They do what they do. But they do it so bloody well.For That Beautiful Feeling sees them finding new detail, new depth, new ways to make what they do fresh again. It’s riveting, full of verve. Dismissed by those that don’t know as a retro turn, the truth is that The Chemical Brothers, despite Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHAfrican Head Charge A Trip to Bolgatanga (On-U Sound)The latest album from percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and On-U Sound producer-par-excellence Adrian Sherwood is stunning. 40-something years into their collaborative career, it proves the pair are still more than capable of offering sonic surprises. A Trip to Bolgatanga is more in-yer-face than a fair chunk of African Head Charge material, less stoned and dubbed out… well, it’s dubbed out alright but comes clattering forward in the mix, energized and foot-moving rather than bonging on the sofa. It even boasts unlikely Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The cows are scattered across the mountains. Without scrambling up the slopes, the only way to summon them is to call. Unni Løvlid is beckoning them. Instead of standing outdoors she is in the medieval Ullensvang Church, in the Norwegian village of Lofthus. She uses the interior of a grand piano to get the necessary resonance, the echo which distant animals would hear.This evocation of an aspect of country life is part of a radical reinterpretation of Edvard Grieg’s 19 Norske Folkeviser (19 Norwegian Folk Songs), composed in 1896. The first piece in the cycle is “Kulok” (Cattle Call). With Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Today James Blake is perhaps more known as super-producer to the stars than post-dubstep innovator. His collaborations with Beyoncé and Travis Scott have perhaps overshadowed his EPs on R&S Records. His two previous albums, 2019’s Assume Form and 2021’s Friends That Break Your Heart, were filled with far more conventional songwriting and tasteful R&B than deconstructed dubstep. However, on his sixth album Playing Robots Into Heaven, Blake wants to remind us that his roots are on the dancefloor. As a preview for the album, Blake organised a series of up-market club nights Read more ...
Supersonic Festival 2023, Birmingham review - musical eccentrics battle the odds and come out on top
Guy Oddy
You’ve got to feel for Lisa Meyer and the team behind Birmingham’s magnificent Supersonic Festival. Just as the live music scene gets to a point where the Covid pandemic is no longer a malign influence on dancing and having fun in a room full of like-minded people, the UK is hit by a two-day rail strike that coincides with this annual shindig of the musically wild and wonderful. On top of that, our loathsome Home Secretary refused to grant a visa for Day One’s headline act, MC Yalla.However, these Brummies aren’t ones to just throw their hands in the air and give up, and on the festival’s Read more ...
joe.muggs
Kristin Hersh’s voice, it transpires, is ageless. In the 80s when Throwing Muses broke through, she hit a particular combination of tones – blurring boundaries between harsh and smooth, melodic and discordant, trad and weird – that became vastly influential.Along with the likes of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Pixies’s Kim Deal, she not only reconfigured the sense of what the female voice was in rock music, but helped codify singing styles for men and women vocalists in grunge and alt-rock ever after.Later, as the Muses and her solo work evolved, she brought out more historical undercurrents Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Here’s one woman "of a certain age" who definitely isn’t invisible. But she’s in the middle of a media furore on which we’d rather not dwell. Sadly it might be the very thing that gets her the publicity she surely deserves. Remember when there was no such things as bad publicity? Vastly under-appreciated, she is a creative powerhouse. Innovative, daring and most of all unpredictable. There’s nothing lazy or repetitive here – quite a feat after 30 years in the business. “On paper, I shouldn’t still be able to surprise people this much, so I’m very proud of that. I’ve gone around for the last Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“March of the Flower Children” was a June 1967 B-side by Los Angeles psych-punks The Seeds. The track was extracted from their third album Future, a peculiar dive into psychedelia which was as tense as it was turned on. While the song’s lyrics referenced a “field of flowers,” a “painted castle” and a sky “painted golden yellow” the mood was jittery, unstable.The title has been borrowed by a three-CD clamshell set dedicated to, as its subtitle puts it, “The American Sounds of 1967.” Over around four hours, this March of the Flower Children collects 85 tracks. The Velvet Underground’s “White Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Yussef Dayes brings a particular kind of collaborative energy to the band he leads. It is special, even life-giving. In this type of music, where jazz meets beats and EDM, it does tend to be the drummer who provides all the restless energy anyway, but it is the fact that he is able to do so completely on his own terms which makes it so refreshing. Yes, there are other, similar examples of great drummer/producers around: Makaya McCraven – who has grabbed the moniker "beat scientist" and generally has more hype around him – does not dissimilar things. And with more of a foot in Read more ...