pop music
Thomas H. Green
Suede finish “Sabotage”. It’s a mid-paced, elegant number set off by swirling, circling central guitar. Frontman Brett Anderson hangs from his microphone stand on the left apron of the stage to deliver it, with the lights down low. Afterwards he paces back to his bandmates, body taut, hair a-flop. He tells the audience he’s been involved in a long ongoing experiment; “standing in front of VOX AC30 amps for 30 years.” The resulting problem, he adds in a rising shout, “is that I can’t hear you.”It’s a showbiz shot, dryly delivered, but it works. He keeps coming back to this, demanding a louder Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Pet Shop Boys are never shy of producing stylishly conceived fan mementos. Coming not long after Faber & Faber’s hardback collection of Neil Tennant’s lyrics, this four-disc set is just such a slice of lovingly rendered memorabilia. After well over three decades in the game – but one since they had a Top 20 hit song – the duo retain a devoted following, ever eager to invest in whatever they’re up to. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am one such, and this review – of a film of a concert I’ve already reviewed on theartsdesk – should be read in that light. After all, who else is buying it Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
This year, says Gary Barlow, marks 30 years since five boys walked into a room in Manchester and auditioned for what would turn out to be the UK’s most successful pop act. It is fitting, then, that what they are billing as the Odyssey tour features 25 hits from across three decades - and more than a few callbacks.The trio - Barlow, Howard Donald and an increasingly hirsute Mark Owen - may keep promising to take us “back to the 90s”, but there’s a decidedly futuristic look to the stage with a giant, glowing orb proving the pre-show focal point. As their band take their places in the shadows, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Bananarama are one of the most successful girl groups of all time. Consisting of Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward, the band’s third original member Siobhan Fahey left in 1988 to form Shakespears Sister. The trio reunited in 2017 for a tour but new album, In Stereo, sees them back as the long-standing duo. The pair have been friends since their school days.Bananarama formed in London in the milieu of post-punk clubland, their opening shot “Aie a Mwana” leading to a major label record deal and backing vocals for Fun Boy Three who were, at the time, one of Britain’s most eagerly anticipated new Read more ...
Barney Harsent
And then there were two... again. Following on from the Original Line-Up tour, Bananarama are back to the core duo of Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward for their first album in 10 years. If it is true that co-founding member Siobhan Fahey’s 1988 departure was due, in part, to the pop chops of 1987’s Stock Aitken and Waterman-produced Wow!, it might be just as well that she didn’t stick around this time. In Stereo is VERY pop.When it works best, the album manages to fuse this tendency with the kind of grown-up disco savvy you’d expect from former SAW labelmate Kylie. The heavily previewed “Dance Read more ...
joe.muggs
Impressively, this collaboration of three of pop's hardest grafters feels like a real group endeavour. Certainly, the multi-quintillion-selling Australian songwriter Sia's piercing tones and melodic style are the most recognisable thing here, but they weave around Hackney-raised Simon Cowell protege Labrinth's more understated voice and globally ubiquitous DJ/producer Diplo's military-grade Latin / dancehall / hip hop derived beats to create impressive coherence. It's not the trip-out the group name might suggest, but it's certainly got its share of odd twists, dizzying quick shifts and Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's a remarkable lightness to the way Norah Jones has glid through her career. She once told theartsdesk that even in her early 20s, faced with the global hyper success of Come Away With Me, “I think I was smart enough to know at the time that it was money in the bank: ‘You can do what you want now, so do it.’” And what she wanted, fantastically, was essentially to be the musician she already was only more so: steadily getting deeper into country melancholy, lounge jazz dreaming and other romantically-lit hinterlands of the American psyche. And now, 17 years on, well Read more ...
mark.kidel
Circa Waves, the guitar-band from Liverpool, go over a storm at festivals and large venues. With simplicity, tightness and concentrated energy, they know how to play with the tension that can build between soft and hard, the yin and the yang of rock forms that continue to sound fresh because they're delivered with a sense of fun and the joy of making party music with catchy lyrics.This is their third album, and they live up to the promise they offered back in 2013, when they first burst on the scene with punchy and uncomplicated power pop, crafted to please, little jewels of songwriting, with Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Every month we start theartsdesk on Vinyl with the Vinyl of the Month, however, the truth is that, depending on your taste, many of the records reviewed below may be your own vinyl of the month. Whether reissues or new material or compilations, theartsdesk on Vinyl attends to all music on plastic. This time we run the gamut from country’n’western to Eighties pop to acid techno to Ozric Tentacles and much else. All sonic life is here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHYves Jarvis The Same But By Different Means (Anti-)Montreal artist singer Jean-Sebastian Audet recorded three albums as Un Blonde but Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Drums appeared a decade ago out of New York, riding a media froth about indie music to critical acclaim and, at least for their debut album, some degree of commercial success. They were a four-piece who owed a large debt to New Order but had enough of their own pizzazz to look promising. Ten years and four albums later (meaning this is their fifth), The Drums are a one man band and don’t sound anything like New Order. This isn’t necessarily always an improvement.For a couple of years The Drums have been the solo project of frontman Jonny Pierce. According to the press release, Brutalism Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
This new collection, compiled by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of Saint Etienne, aurally delineates a period when much that was British had an edge of bleakness. Accordingly, Three Day Week – When the Lights Went Out 1972–1975 ought to be a grim listen, a slog during which the mind is improved and new outlooks are brought on board but is as lively as a tractor reversing through swiftly setting concrete.Glam rock and sparkly soul may have been on the chart menu, but as the back cover puts it: “In 1973 Britain was still a nation of outside bogs; tens of thousands were housed in wartime pre-fabs. Read more ...
joe.muggs
Billie Eilish is a vaudevillian. Crack that and everything else falls into place. Her impossible precociousness (at 17, she's a superstar and has been in the public eye for four years) and voraciousness (her and her brother Finneas's writing swerves from torch songs to trap beats, far-out electronica to glam-goth) should by all rights be an annoying mess, but absorb this album like a hallucinatory gothic cabaret show and it all makes sense. The gender ambiguities and gallows humour make sense. Even the manic pixie dream girl filtered via Resident Evil persona makes sense. Dammit, even the Read more ...