pop music
Adam Sweeting
If the Small Faces weren’t quite The Beatles or the Stones, they were one of the classic British bands of their era, and their recordings are treasured by ancient Mods, Damon Albarn, Noel Gallagher and even discerning representatives of today’s youth. Carol Harrison’s stage musical, evidently a labour of love by a devoted fan who knew singer Steve Marriott back in the day, successfully evokes the thrills and chaos of the mid-Sixties music business, and (better still) features an onstage band which manages to do the music justice.The quartet’s career only lasted from 1965 to 1969, which means Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What does a band do when it loses a key member? Pack it in? Carry on as if nothing has happened? Execute a radical change of direction? Nick McCarthy, Franz Ferdinand’s rhythm guitarist and keyboard player, left the band last July and their new album Always Ascending answers the questions.Obviously, Franz Ferdinand have not packed it in after the loss and two new members replace McCarthy, a keyboard player and a rhythm guitarist. Before his departure, McCarthy had co-written all the band’s songs. The last record Franz Ferdinand contributed to was their hugely successful 2015 collaboration Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Rae Morris, a singer from Blackpool, has shinned up the slippery pop biz tree the modern, major label, mainstream way; ultra-managed, co-writes with Clean Bandit, support slots with George Ezra and Tom Odell, vocal collaborations with Bombay Bicycle Club, slow careful “development”. It’s plain old vocational training, really. In terms of raw, gutter-to-the-stars excitement, her career emanates the dizzy appeal of a dentist’s apprenticeship in Dorking. It is to her credit, then, that a good helping of actual character escapes onto her second album, alongside a few decent songs and one absolute Read more ...
Barney Harsent
With the possible exception of Talking Heads, I can’t think of another band who had such an exceptional run of early albums as Simple Minds. After a promising but uneven debut, they released Real to Real Cacophony in 1979 and barely put a foot wrong for five (some might argue six) albums.Big Music (2014) was a knowing look over a shoulder; a direct reference to the stark electronic thrum of their early albums, and one which largely eschewed the later stadium pomp. In doing so, it was open to accusations of mannered pastiche – some thought it an odd choice for a band that had once set so much Read more ...
howard.male
Growing up with the music of David Bowie is probably not the best grounding for being a music critic because it raises expectations unreasonably high for every other adventurous musician one happens upon. When I first heard the intense, bordering-on-hysterical music of Merrill Garbus (the main creative force behind Tune-Yards) eight or so years ago, I actually had to get up from my desk and pace the room. I was so excited to hear something that both acknowledged pop and rock templates and crushed them underfoot. But with love comes responsibility. But unfortunately Garbus seems to have Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
The Go! Team have been unrivalled in the world of euphoric hip-pop after their samplerific debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, blasted its way onto the 2005 Mercury Prize shortlist. Since then, founding member Ian Parton has utilised everything from typewriters to gospel choirs to songs about milk in his quest to be a “cheerleader for a better world”. Their new album, Semicircle, takes this tradition of innovation and fun to new heights.One of the most striking things about the album is the instrumentation. Parton and his merry band of musicians (including Sam Dook, Simone Odaranile, and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Following in the footsteps of its predecessor lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar (2014), where Robert Plant was also accompanied by his current band the Sensational Space Shifters, Carry Fire has been assembled from ingredients culled from virtually every continent. There are Indian and Arabic drones, spiralling 12-string guitar arabesques which bridge the gap from San Francisco to Katmandu, and drum and percussion patterns from various African locations, alongside shots of blues and folk and a haze of electronica. “Bones of Saints” could almost be called a pop song.Plant no longer positions Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The official reissue of The Beatles’ Christmas records is a major event. Since Live at the BBC was issued in 1994, archive Beatles’ releases have fallen into two categories. There have been releases devoted to or drawing from archive disinterments: Live at the BBC and its 2013 follow-up, the Anthology series, the unreleased studio sessions included in the recent Sgt Pepper’s package and so on.Then, there have been reconfigurations of existing releases: 2003’s Let it be…Naked, the egregious Love compilation, the satisfying Magical Mystery Tour box, a box set of mono albums and this year’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For the past few years my Album of the Year has leapt out at me, craved attention, stood out from the competition. With no disrespect to Nick Mulvey’s fine second album, that wasn’t the case in 2017. Many albums this year had vital, enjoyable music, but marred by much lesser songs. Especially notable in this vein were Katy Perry and Kesha, the best of whose albums, Witness and Rainbow, was rarely far from my car stereo, perfect 21st century girl-pop and sassy eclectic comeback material, respectively. However, neither boasted the consistency of, say, Beyoncé’s Lemonade of last year.There were Read more ...
theartsdesk on Vinyl 35: Christmas 2017 Special with Pink Floyd, Mariah Carey, ELO, Madness and more
Thomas H. Green
The music business is about to disappear on holiday wholesale and we won’t see hide nor hair of it until mid-January. There’s just time for one last 2017 vinyl celebration. Regular readers should be warned that theartsdesk on Vinyl becomes rather easy-going at this time of year – must be all the Baileys – and prone to making allowances for the odd sliver of cheese and office-party silliness. It’s a Christmas special where, like Christmas itself, truly good music mingles more freely with the “fun” stuff, and music that might just make a good present. Have a top one. Enjoy yourself too much. Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It’s easy to be cynical about Christmas pop albums. This is, of course, because so many of them are awful, hastily cobbled together collections of nothing, and about as much fun as munching your way through a kilo of sixpences hoping to find a tiny nugget of Christmas pudding.The idea that former Keane frontman Tom Chaplin could manage to reverse this trend might seem unlikely, but then this winter has been quite the season for shocks. From the President of the US trying to start a war in the Middle East to distract from his sexual misconduct, to a bungling burglar on a Christmas ad hugging a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Sia is a 21st century pop behemoth, an unstoppable figure who, despite no longer wishing to take part in the increasingly visual aspects of our social media age, still maintains a top-flight career. The best of her output hits the Venn diagram sweet spot where ear-bud phone-pop crosses over with wit and canny thinking. She’s not this writer’s bag – with the exception of Katy Perry’s smasher, “Chained to the Rhythm”, which she co-wrote – so it’s all the more of a surprise that her Christmas album proves such an endearing proposition.Everyday Is Christmas was created with another contemporary Read more ...