New Music Reviews
Album: Rats on Rafts - Deep BelowFriday, 07 February 2025
Deep Below’s first track is titled “Hibernation.” “A winter breeze blows through my mind,” intones a colourless, dispirited male voice. The ensuing lyrics are similarly bleak. “Trying to warm myself with the memories you’ve left behind, Deep inside this hole bitterness consumes my soul, One day I might wake up but I know it won’t be today.” Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: You Got Me Hooked! - More Marylebone Beat GirlsSunday, 02 February 2025
After co-fronting Vinegar Joe with Robert Palmer, Elkie Brooks first charted as a solo artist in 1977 with “Pearl’s a Singer.” Yet there was more to her musical past than the 1971 to 1974 spell in the blues-rock outfit. Her contributions to You Got Me Hooked! - More Marylebone Beat Girls are “He's Gotta Love me” and “Stop the Music” – both released a decade before “Pearl’s a Singer.” Read more... |
Formal Sppeedwear, The Windmill review - Stoke-on-Trent trio reinvigorates the new wave eraThursday, 30 January 2025
As Stoke-on-Trent’s Formal Sppeedwear immerse themselves in what turns out to be their penultimate song, they become lost in the music. What they are playing takes over. Revolving guitar motifs spray forth like light reflected from a glitter ball. An elastic bass guitar bubbles, the frill-free drumming is hard, precise and about forward motion. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 88: Violent Femmes, Ringo Starr, ARXX, Dexter Gordon, Black Star, Dennis Bovell and moreTuesday, 28 January 2025
VINYL OF THE MONTH Buñuel Mansuetude (Skin Graft/Overdrive) Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: New York Dolls - Showdown At The MercerSunday, 26 January 2025
“A band you’re gonna like, whether you like it or not.” The proclamation in the press ads for the New York Dolls’ debut album acknowledged they were a hard sell. Read more... |
Album: ALT BLK ERA - Rave ImmortalSaturday, 25 January 2025
The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far back in time that what remains, for those under 40, is an idea, a meta myth. It is one that ALT BLK ERA embrace. Read more... |
Amelia Coburn, Komedia, Brighton review - short set from rising Teeside folk sensation hits the sweet spotThursday, 23 January 2025
The quandary is this. Middlesbrough singer Amelia Coburn made one of my favourite albums of last year, her debut, Between the Moon and the Milkman, and I hear she’s playing live near me on the south coast, not something that happens every day. Read more... |
Album: FKA Twigs - EusexuaThursday, 23 January 2025
It would be really easy to get hung up on the definition for this album. Is it a new sexuality term? A holiday genre of technopop? A planet that will align with the others on January 29th? English singer Tahliah Debrett Barnett, aka FKA Twig, describes via X, that "eusexua is a practice, eusexua is a state of being, eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience". Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Twilights - Twilights Time The Complete 60s RecordingsSunday, 19 January 2025
On 26 September 1966, The Twilights set-off from Australia to Britain. The journey, on the liner the Castel Felice, took six weeks. A day after boarding they learned their sixth single, “Needle in a Haystack,” was an Australian number one. There was nothing they could do to promote the hit, so after disembarking at Southampton they looked for work. Read more... |
Album: The Weather Station - HumanhoodThursday, 16 January 2025
Four of Humanhood’s 13 tracks are short, impressionistic mood pieces. Between 48 seconds and just-over a minute-and-a-half long, they mostly lack singing. Instrumentation is jazzy, leaning on piano and wind instruments. Drones and white noise evoke ocean spray or wind. In one case, a wordless vocal edges towards articulating recognisable syllables. Read more... |
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