guitar
Thomas H. Green
I have a theory about Reef. In the mid-Nineties, when the Somerset outfit appeared, they were reviled by London music journalists. This was mostly because they sounded like a hoary, unreconstructed early-Seventies blues-rock band. Those same journalists, however, were excitedly touting bands who lamely emulated Kinks-ish Sixties-ness, faux new wave, or a mixture of both (ie Britpop). So, Reef, arguably, just choose the wrong decade at the wrong time.As an electronic vanguard zealot I sneered at all retro. So, I too disliked Reef. However, cards-on-the-table, decades later my partner digs them Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Rakel Mjöll has a nice line in understatement. “We released this album in July 2020”, she said at one point, referring to her band’s sophomore record “So When You Gonna...” before adding, dryly, “which wasn’t the best time”. Finally, nearly two years later, Dream Wife have managed to get out on the road and actually tour those songs, and, thankfully, this was an evening worth the wait.A glowing logo with the band name on it hung above the stage in the converted church that is St Luke’s, and like a punky Bat Signal, when lit up the band appeared, with bassist Bella Podpadec in particular Read more ...
joe.muggs
Metronomy have gone all out to knock off their quirky corners here, and goodness, it’s worked. It’s quite a move from a band whose eccentricity has always been part and parcel of their image – and they really haven’t done it by halves, in fact they’ve brought themselves a lot closer to their peers and near-peers in the process. But somehow, by zooming in on the archetypal, risking losing unique character, this album really demonstrates the level of talent that Metronomy main man Joe Mount really has. It’s been a roundabout route here – this is the seventh Metronomy album in 16 years Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Katherine Priddy’s debut album came out in the summer, and it’s remained a high point for the rest of the year as 2021 plays out to the sombre drums and drones of resurgent pandemic warnings, fresh lockdowns, closed venues, silenced auditoriums. Her last gig of the year was at St Pancras Old Church on 16th December. I intended to be there, but Omicron infection rates ballooned to the point that going anywhere seemed no longer possible. Hello, and goodbye, to 2021.So I’m here at home again, hunkering down, listening to the songs from The Eternal Rocks Beneath, astonished again at their Read more ...
Paul Weller, Barrowland, Glasgow review - Modfather holding back father time with old and new tricks
Jonathan Geddes
There was a brief lapse in this lengthy set when Paul Weller stood up from the piano, walked towards centre stage and then pivoted back the way he came, having realised he was moving a song too early. “That’s the trouble with getting old, you forget shit” observed the 63-year-old drily, but the two hour set itself was a testament to Weller’s continued creativity, if also his stubbornness too.It was a sprawling trawl though his varied career, including a handful of tracks from his old bands, the Jam and the Style Council. The latter was represented early, and the blend of zestful melody and Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Adams has long been Robert Plant’s guitarist in bands including the Sensational Space Shifters, as well as working with fellow Space Shifter Juldeh Camara in the band JuJu. He is steeped in American Blues as well as its West African and Desert Blues roots, having worked as a producer for Rachid Taha and on some of Tinariwen’s finest albums. More recently, he has produced and performed with the outrageously energetic southern Italian Taranta band, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, and it’s from that collaboration that this new set with CGS’s violinist and percussionist, Mauro Durante, stems.They Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There is unquestionably a more mellow side to the Jesus and Mary Chain these days, even when reviving their most ferocious glories from the past. Prior to launching this two-halved set, comprising their 1987 classic Darklands to begin with and a mixture of singles, B-sides and obscurities for after, vocalist Jim Reid took time out to politely explain the format.He even mentioned that the fivesome would be having a cup of tea between the two portions, suggesting a surprising tranquillity. Yet the following 90 minutes was, at its best, a bracing, jarring reminder of the power of the East Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s been almost 10 years since Bangles’ front woman Susanna Hoffs has released any original tunes, preferring instead to go for unexpected songs by reasonably well-known artists.This is a pity, as she’s had a hand in writing more than a few cracking tracks over the years – “Hero Takes a Fall” and “Dover Beach” from the Bangles’ first album All Over the Place being particularly notable examples. Still, if the muse isn’t giving up the goods, improbable cover versions is as good a way to go as any.So it is with her latest solo album, Bright Lights, which features reinterpretations of songs by ( Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Following in the slipstream of wide critical acclaim for posthumous album Mutator, released earlier this year, comes Alan Vega After Dark by the former Suicide frontman. It’s a starkly different album to its predecessor, swapping concrete collisions and considered collages for the tremolo tones of vintage rock and roll, the driving krautrock energy of 70s Dusseldorf and the space cadet cadence of… well, of Alan Vega.Vega’s last live band recording, made in 2015 in collaboration with members of Pink Slip Daddy, a band similarly steeped in the spirit of rock and roll and the pure power of Read more ...
John Bungey
With his band King Crimson laid up, the only chance to check out Robert Fripp's guitar prowess lately has been in the Robert & Toyah's Sunday Lunch videos that husband and wife post on YouTube. Their popular weekly assaults on classic rock hits are a game mix of the heroic and the cringeworthy. Toyah Willcox is someone to whom the label “shy and retiring” has never knowingly been attached.Anyway, here's a reminder of what Fripp can do in more serious moments, with his guitar hooked up to a container-load of digital gizmos, including a 76-second delay unit, as he creates his orchestra-like Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Expectations are high with Julian Lage; they always have been. The guitarist is one of the special ones: born on Christmas Day (1987)...appearing with Carlos Santana at age seven... a documentary made about him at eight...clocked by Gary Burton at the Grammy awards at the cusp of his teens...and performing in Burton’s group at an age when he still needed parental chaperoning.Through the years, he has continued to deliver. That sense of being not only supremely gifted but also having worked to achieve a level of musicianship which can at any moment take him in any direction he chooses, of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When Wolf Alice appeared a decade ago, you’d have to have been a soothsayer of Merlin-like proportions to predict the career trajectory they’ve had since. Certainly, prior to their debut album, this writer took them for just another female-fronted London indie guitar band, following the same old formula. Instead, they blossomed into imaginative alt-rock/pop ones-to-watch who can sell out Alexandra Palace, a Mercury Music Prize under their belt, now on the verge of big-festival-headlining proper fame.They deserve it. It’s an overused word (by music journalists, at least) but eclecticism is Read more ...