New music
Kieron Tyler
On the cover of The Hit Parade’s Pick Of The Pops Vol.1 it says “London’s No.1 Pop Group.” Underneath, a strapline states “File under: C86 twee Sarah Sixties pop.” Obviously, irony is at play with some of this – from the band name to the album title and the top pop group boast. The suggested categorisation might be nearer the mark.Pick Of The Pops Vol.1 is a vinylisation of a Hit Parade comp first issued in 2012. Back then, there were 20 tracks. Now, it’s 14. Picking these particular pops must have been tough as The Hit Parade formed in 1984 and since then there’s been seven albums and, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Over the past few years, Joe Pera Talks With You has been one of television’s joys. Each episode finds the small-town American music teacher navigating life in Upper Michigan. Unhurriedly, with good humour, he deals with the day-to-day small things. The big things are more complicated, but he finds his way. Every programme is a warm bath in goodness.Joe Pera himself is a stand-up comedian who has created the character with his own name. Now, he has directed the promo film for “Hank” from Philadelphia band Friendship’s fourth album Love the Stranger. An older man goes by boat to Little Read more ...
Katie Colombus and Caspar Gomez
FRIDAY 22 JULY by Caspar GomezWhen my regular festival pal Finetime and I have set up the wibbly, inflatable-poled tents he bought from Lidl, we settle to drinks, his from a chill-box, mine from a 35-pint container of Pilton Labyrinth scrumpy. We attune to the neighbours. Next to us is a tent-corral proudly flying a flag featuring a pink unicorn with penises for legs, spunking out rainbows. They are discussing the history of the Soviet Sputnik programme of the late 1950s. The people from the tents next door, that is. Not the unicorn’s penis-legs.As we will learn, this is the way people Read more ...
Liz Thomson
From Brighton to Berlin with the Brit School alums, who formed 20 years ago – allegedly out shopping in Primark. Virgin signed them three months later. What started as “a joke” has endured through five albums – and here comes their sixth, 10 Tracks to Echo in the Dark.And how appropriate that this slice of Eighties retro should appear right now – just as we’re reprising many of the grimmer aspects of that decade, not least a recession and, possibly soon, a Thatcher 2.0 if Liz Truss cosplay fools the ever-gullible public.It was also the decade of synthpop – electronica, disco, Eurodance – as Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When Jamie T first appeared in the early noughties, he was trumpeted by some who should have known better as the musical heir to Joe Strummer, while actually sounding more like a Kate Nash acolyte. Six years since his last album, The Theory of Whatever dips into a range of genres from dreary indie rock to low energy hip hop and acoustic ballads fuelled by a seemingly endlesss word-spaghetti of clichés.Opening track “90’s Cars” is low tempo, early-80's sounding electropop which comes over like a tribute to Ricky Gervais’s short-lived band Seona Dancing, while the tepid indie rock of “The Old Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“At all times, the film-makers have attempted to present an accurate portrait of the events depicted and the people involved.” The on-screen statement beginning each of Get Back's three parts acknowledges that definitions of accuracy can depend on points of view.And the point of view with director Peter Jackson’s interpretation of the 60-plus hours of film and over 150 hours of audio from The Beatles’s January 1969 attempts to make a film or television special and an album is his – and those who signed-off the 468 minutes first seen via streaming and now available on Blu-ray or DVD. None Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Throughout the 1990s and the first decade of this century, Ben Harper achieved global stardom, although the UK was a territory where he never achieved lift-off. By contrast, in the US, Australia and much of Europe, he’s regarded as a heavyweight (he’s won three Grammys!).His career has combined the earnestness of Sixties/Seventies singer-songwriter political activism, with lively musical eclecticism, and, sometimes, a blander middle-of-the-road vibe redolent of his pal Jack Johnson. His latest album showcases the rawer end of his appeal.Bloodline Maintenance is Harper’s first “proper” album Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kathryn Williams’ creativity leaves most singers standing. She’s always up to something and it’s usually interesting. As well as multiple albums over two decades, including one themed around Sylvia Plath and another created with the poet Carol Anne Duffy, last year she had her first novel published, the ominous island-set tale, The Ormering Tides. She’s done loads else too, her work often loosely in the folk form, heavily seasoned with the hurts of loving and living. Her latest contains much of the latter, but its production is more opulent, electronic and experimental than her usual Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Maybe it’s inevitable that their fate is to receive just a fraction of the recognition they deserve. Gareth Williams is one of the crop of truly remarkable – and now fully-formed – jazz pianists from the UK born in the years 1968 and 1969. I can think of three of them – there may be more.So, to over-simplify radically: Liam Noble is the one who will always, without fail, take a listener off in a surprising direction, and do so again and again. Jason Rebello has the most naturally poetic touch and can overwhelm with the sheer beauty of his playing, and yet is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Jack White’s last couple of albums, Boarding House Reach from 2018 and Fear of the Dawn from April this year, were both driven by experimentalism, dipping into electronics, hip hop, noise and more. They were both, to differing degrees, admirable in intent, coming from an artist perceived as zealously retro, but they were also only partially successful.Entering Heaven Alive is a less wilful beast and, in terms of enjoyably straightforward songwriting, the better for it. It will, naturally, and as is undoubtedly intended, be viewed of-a-piece with Fear of the Dawn, since the latter only came Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This one sounded implausible. Frida Kahlo, the great (and fashionable – collected by the likes of Madonna) Mexican painter interpreted by Indian classical music at the Elgar Room in the Royal Albert Hall. It was, however, entrancing, made a curious sense, and was a different way of immersing yourself both in the music and paintings.Presented by the enterprising Saudha Society of Poetry and Indian Music, the director TM Ahmed Kaysher, a Leeds-based poet was perched stage left and briefly described his own relation with Kahlo at a time in his life when he was suffering from depression Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Sweetness never lasts too long at a Haim gig. No sooner had Alana Haim, the youngest of the Californian siblings, finished a speech about her delight about being back in Glasgow by announcing she was going to “smell the f****** roses” then bass-playing elder sister Este piped up with “I’m smelling my armpits. They are ripe.” It summed up a chat-heavy show that at times felt like part gig, part stand-up comedy try-out.For all the banter, which reached such an amount that Alana quipped at one stage she felt all they’d done was talk, the trio have an assurance about playing large venues. An Read more ...