pop music
Thomas H. Green
The lockdown may be loosening but we’re no nearer to gigs and festivals occurring so, for the foreseeable, online is where it’s at. Here, then, is the latest selection of musical happenings that you can wrap your eyes and ears around during the coming week. Dive in!Make Music DayOriginating with France’s Fête de la Musique back in 1982, the idea of Make Music Day is to put as much music in as many public spaces as possible. It has blossomed over the decades, catching on in the UK where, last year, almost 30,000 performed to around 140,000 people. In 2020, of course, the event takes place Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Jehnny Beth was the formidable and mysterious leader of Savages’ flinty monochrome attack, remoulding stark post-punk into gender-fluid shapes. Retiring the band after two Mercury-nominated albums, and returning to France after more than a decade of self-discovery in London, this solo debut is the product of an intense period of self-reflection, softening the carapace of her English persona to ponder innocence and rustic roots.Beth’s friend PJ Harvey laughingly dismissed her poetry as “terrible”, and even Cillian Murphy’s spoken-word turn can’t redeem some po-faced portentousness, or a chilly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
There’s something wrong with the picture above. It’s the sleeve of a French EP issued in August 1966 credited to a surly looking band called “Them”. The chap standing in the middle has what appear to be bullet holes in his shirt, but where’s the band’s frontman and main songwriter Van Morrison? Further confusing matters, the EP was also issued with the band credit altered to “The Belfast Gypsies”, where otherwise the sleeve was the same (pictured below left).The band on the sleeve was not Them, or drawn from the outfit Morrison was with in 1966. Them had split in Hawaii in June 1966 following Read more ...
joe.muggs
Will Westerman is not afraid of sounding retro. It's clear his influences are diverse, from jazz fusion to the bedroom proto-house experiments of Arthur Russell. But in their final form, his high gloss production, highly literate songs and fretless bass sound like something out of a creatively leftfield but megabucks studio-produced mid Eighties record: the likes of Talk Talk, Kate Bush, Roxy Music's Avalon and above all The Blue Nile loom large.Westerman's arrangements and DEEK Recordings owner Nathan “Bullion” Jenkins's production does an incredible job of doing what would have required Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lady Gaga proclaimed by Tweet that her sixth album represents her “absolute love of electronic music”. Chromatica features EDM names such as Axwell from Swedish House Mafia, French DJ-producers Tchami and Madeon, bro’step superstar Skillex, as well as a good few more. It is a step away from the likeable pop experimentalism of her last album, Joanne, yet does not, unfortunately, have the sheer dancefloor heft of her albums Artpop and, especially, the bangin’ Born This Way.The contradictory aspect of Chromatica is that while the music is often generic Euro-cheese, it regularly plays off Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Collector of the Light” is based around what sounds like a treated bass guitar. As the neck is moved up and down, multiple notes are plucked at once. The instrument’s sound is subaquatic, wobbly. Over this, a distant, echoey voice sings of being the “collector of light”, restoring dreams and “silver points of wonder”. Atmospherically and structurally, a parallel is the 1968 13th Floor Elevators’ single “May the Circle Remain Unbroken”. “Sunbury Electronics Sequence”, with its obviously after-the-fact title, is a disconcerting nine-minute mélange of speeded-up snatches of voice – “mar-mi Read more ...
Barney Harsent
In 2000, when Badly Drawn Boy released his debut album, The Hour of Belwiderbeast, it felt like an embarrassment of riches. Along with the string of singles he’d previously put out, ranging from the lo-fi to the luminous, Damon Gough’s creative tap was in full flow. His 2002 follow-up, the soundtrack for hit film About a Boy, was similarly sublime. Of course, if you’re going to place a bar that high, you won’t always reach it. Gough’s last album proper was 2010’s It’s What I’m Thinking…, an introspective affair that pays dividends, but demands close attention and repeated listening Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What a joy. I Love the New Sky opens with the most un-Stones-like “Empathy For the Devil”. Rolling piano, see-sawing violin and snatches of bubbling synth course through a propulsive pop nugget with cascading harmonies and a McCartney-esque melody. Next up, the chugging “Sweetheart Mercury” is top-drawer art-rock with a similarly winning melody. After this, the album continues in equally fine style. Tim Burgess’ new solo outing is lovely. Clever, elegant pop.Overall, the vibe melds the brightness of early Seventies Todd Rundgren, Nilsson’s introspective reflections and the British art-pop of Read more ...
joe.muggs
This is an extremely impressive undertaking. how i'm feeling now was conceived, written and recorded in under two months, in isolation, with Charli XCX sourcing beats and artwork from a sprawling collective of regular collaborators and fans. The tracklist was finalised only in the last week or so, and even two days before release date, only “work in progress” promos were available, signalling that it was still in flux. It's all a perfect encapsulation of the singer's position as the emblematic artist of Gen Z (“Zoomers”), the generation who've grown up with video communication and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The enduring status of The Beatles shouldn’t distract from them having been one amongst many Liverpool bands while they found their feet. In October 1961, local impresario and Cavern Club DJ/MC Bob Wooler worked out that there were 125 active bands in Liverpool and its environs, and that he knew of 249 overall since he began working with music in the city.At that point, like The Beatles, King Size Taylor and the Dominoes were on the rise. They had come together in 1958 in Seaforth, north of Liverpool, as a union of rock ’n rollers The Dominoes and six-foot-five guitarist Ted “Kingsize” Taylor Read more ...
caspar.gomez
What times. They cancelled Glastonbury. Festival season 2020 disappeared. Then certain potions and compounds associated with festivaling ran dry. Well, the latter exist, of course. There’s a fellow over the road who’s still selling talcum powder and stinking chemo-skunk from his porch. The reprobates who gather there on sunny days clearly think “social distancing” is an alternate term for a restraining order which, on this one lucky occasion, doesn’t apply to them. So how about a mini-music fest right here? With all the quality quivver fizz and nom noms an insurmountable car journey away, I’m Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
One thing with this whole lockdown business is that we’re all trying to be as nice as possible to each other. At the moment, we music writers aim to recommend material people can enjoy while stuck at home. Our knives are staying sheathed. What, then, are we supposed to do when confronted with Twinnie’s debut album? The most positive thing that springs to mind is that the best of it sounds like Taylor Swift just before she went full pop. Which is hardly a glowing endorsement. I’ve one other nice-ish thing to say but will save that until the end of this review, then maybe you’ll forget the Read more ...