blues
theartsdesk
Lee “Scratch” Perry and Friends: Disco Devil - The Jamaican DiscomixesThomas H GreenAs bass culture conquers the musical universe, with even Justin Bieber diving into dubstep waters and gnarly electro-goth Skrillex one of the biggest earning new artists of the year, the double CD Disco Devil is a timely release. It represents the roots of bass culture. Not the prehistory of Lee “Scratch” Perry’s early Seventies experiments, but a slightly later turning point that led us directly to where we are today. One of the notions that Jamaica’s sound system culture was built around was an emphasis of Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
If the name is both banal and irritating – seemingly you are expected to spell it kNIFE and fORK – this album is a triumph on its own terms. Despite it being at times overly self-conscious, there are occasional flashes of dark genius.The band are a duo, Laurie Hall and Eric Drew Feldman, who last made an album eight years ago. They have attracted raves from PJ Harvey and Frank Black, although as Feldman has worked with both artists, and they are probably mates, how seriously should we take their plaudits? Still, it gives you some idea of the aesthetic parameters, as does the fact that the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Green Day: The Studio Albums 1990-2009Thomas H GreenPrior to a trilogy of new albums, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!, all to be released by the end of the year, a box set arrives containing the eight albums that brought Californian trio Green Day to this point. At the dawn on the Nineties, parallel to grunge’s hairy existential rock, there was another American punk explosion more directly imitative of Seventies originals such as The Clash and The Ramones. Alongside groups such as Rancid and The Offspring, Green Day led the charge and their first two albums, on the independent Lookout! label, lay out Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Trojan Presents Freedom Sounds, a Celebration of Jamaican MusicKieron TylerThree-and-a-half minutes in, a heavily reverbed drum suddenly rattles and the track heads off into outer space. Morse-code bass dominates, the hi-hat swishes and odd bits of the full instrumental track waft in and out. Something like a home fire alarm bleeps. “None Shall Escape the Judgement” begins normally enough, a mid-tempo two-step reggae shuffler with a swooning, devotional vocal from Johnny Clarke. But really, it's two songs in one, that second half the creation of sonic auteur King Tubby and Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It seems almost a lifetime since Tom Jones was a man in very tight clothes who did well in the clubs of Las Vegas. After the fallow years, his 1988 cover of Prince’s “Kiss” kick-started a tongue-in-cheek rehabilitation period that lasted a decade, right up to the unforgettable “whoowauh!” of “Sex Bomb”. But what happened next surprised everyone. Jones started to relearn his craft. And now, after the last two decidedly post-ironic albums, the question remains, has “Jones the Voice” really become a genuinely credible artist?The organisers of the 2012 Blues Fest series certainly felt so. And Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Make it Your Sound, Make it Your Scene – Vanguard Records & the 1960s Musical RevolutionKieron TylerSeymour and Maynard Solomon’s Vanguard Records hasn’t been given the same amount of recognition as Jac Holzman’s Elektra, despite both labels being equally important and having trodden – at least up to the late Sixties – very similar paths. This neat four-CD box set should ensure that Vanguard gets more recognition.Like Elektra, Vanguard cast its net into New York. Also like Elektra, its earliest releases didn’t suggest a coherent strategy. Viennese waltzs, Elizabethan Read more ...
Andrew Perry
The suspicion that Jack White is a humourless plank-spanker, harboured by certain members of the media at least, has been thrown into deeper conjecture this past month, with the news that he’s entered into a war of words with the compilers of The Guinness Book Of Records.With his first band, The White Stripes, he’d secured an entry in the trusty annual’s 2009 edition for performing the shortest-ever concert – a one-note affair in Newfoundland, Canada in 2007, which may or may not have been a spontaneous gag for the benefit of a rockumentary being shot at the time. Since then, numerous rival Read more ...
theartsdesk
Sandy Denny: Sandy (Deluxe Edition), Like An Old Fashioned Waltz (Deluxe Edition), Rendezvous (Deluxe Edition)Graham FullerSandy Denny completists unable to drop a thousand to acquire the now scarce 2010 19-disc box set can fill their collections another way. They can add to their Denny-era Strawbs, Fairport Convention, and Fotheringay CDs last year’s remastered The North Star Grassman and the Ravens, the melancholy 1971 masterpiece with which she launched her solo career, and these three newly spruced and expanded albums: Sandy (1972), another classic full of loneliness and yearning; the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
This may be the Thick as a Brick 2 tour, but it’s also the 44th year of Ian Anderson’s performing career, mainly as Jethro Tull's front man. In that role he's variously been a bluesman, a rocker and a folkie.1972's Thick as a Brick was dubbed a "progressive rock satire". Tongue-in-cheek as it might have been, it was also 100 percent prog. Yet, like much of Tull’s back catalogue, it continues to influence a new generation. The question the crowd at Hammersmith were asking last night was this: at 64, could Anderson still pull it off?The answer in part is given by the new album. Here Anderson Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Some say that since Gomez beat Pulp to win 1998’s Mercury award, their progress has been a little disappointing. After two or three albums their infectious frazzled blues became replaced by anodyne AOR, until eventually all their wild innocence had gone. Maybe it was too much too early, or maybe because half of them migrated to the States. Either way, their last two offerings have felt like they're simply pandering to safe suburban tastes. Last night’s concert, however, was less about last year’s Whatever’s on Your Mind than the band's 15th anniversary. And, if Gomez have become increasingly Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Sometimes I feel I’m the only one who finds Jack White’s music overrated. Although he's undeniably a prodigious axe man, I've never found his trademark raw, “underproduced” sound as convincing. That, however, was The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. Now White’s made an album just under his own name. And that begs the question of whether he has come up with a new musical manifesto. And, if so, is it any good?Anyone hoping for a substantial creative left-turn will be disappointed. Blunderbuss still pounds the stripped-down blues rock trail. It's true there are more diversions along the way, Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Nothing tests an artist’s mettle more severely than having to negotiate a full-blown case of tech-horror. Half way through the third number last night, a particularly sweet version of “Summer Morning Rain“, an ear-scorching sonic car crash brought everything skidding to a decidedly ugly halt. Simone Felice leapt from his chair like a scalded cat and muttered something about lawyers. For a moment I thought he was actually going to scarper. And it had all started so well.Formerly of The Felice Brothers and The Duke & The King, on record Felice is in the process of shedding musical skins, Read more ...