pop music
Kieron Tyler
An expectant audience isn’t the only thing which can be seen from the main stage of Helsinki’s Flow Festival. Janelle Monáe, Manic Street Preachers and OutKast are also greeted by a gas holder looming ominously before them. This brooding remnant of the festival site’s former use as a gasworks brings a unique flavour to Flow. The setting and site are unlike that of any other festival.In its 11th year, Flow 2014 balanced big international names against edgier artists and Finns of all shapes, sizes and styles. With great food, a kid-friendly third day and art installations, the festival is a Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The cover of her new album, I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, has Sinéad O’Connor sporting a black wig and latex dominatrix dress, a glammed-up guitar wrapped in her arms. Well, at least she made the effort. On stage at the Roundhouse she launched her fine new album sans latex or hair, in black t-shirt and trousers, still the shaven-headed siren of unbidden passions and complicated yearnings.From "Nothing Compares" through to new songs such as the floor-pounding single "Take Me to Church", the lush "Vishnu Room", or the closing Tennessee Williams-referencing "Streetcars" – all of them strong Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Sinéad O’Connor has adopted quite a range of personas over the 30 years or so of her singing career. There was the proto-Riot Grrl of her first album, The Lion and the Cobra; the ballad singer of “Nothing Compares 2 U”; the Irish folkie of Sean-Nos Nua; and the pseudo-Rasta of Throw Down Your Arms. In 2014, she presents herself as a romantic lover, but then obscures this by wading into the “Ban Bossy” debate and calling her new collection I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss. It was originally to be named “The Vishnu Room”, after one of its songs.While O’Connor has turned out many magnificent songs Read more ...
joe.muggs
Just in case anyone thought the hype surrounding Gloucestershire-born Spanish/Jamaican singer FKA Twigs was based only on her unique looks, startling styling and slightly silly videos, this album begins with her voice alone. It too is utterly singular, a choirboy-like chant layered over itself like some New Age confection, before the sci-fi whirrs and booms of "Preface" remind us that we're in the currently hyper-fashionable territory of reconfiguring US R&B through the prism of British soundsystem music post-dubstep and grime.That voice is way upfront in the mix throughout this album. Of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hadda Brooks: Queen of the Boogie and MoreThe rolling piano is irresistible. Upbeat and swinging, it powers forward with an unstoppable momentum. Accompanied by walking double bass and brushed two-step drums, the right hand suddenly peels off a descending cluster of notes while the left pounds out a solid, repetitive rhythm. Although almost rock ‘n’ roll, this is the sound of 1946 and Hadda Brooks’ “Juke Box Boogie”.“Juke Box Boogie” became the opening cut on Brooks' first album, 1948’s modestly titled Queen of the Boogie. Its reissue brings not only an opportunity to revel in and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“A theatrical pop song-cycle of musical postcards from the hotspots of memory from a semi-immortal polysexual sensualist’s life” is how the fourth solo album from Erasure's Andy Bell describes itself. The story and album begin with “Freshly Buggered”, where Torsten, born 1906, arrives at school to tell all that he is gay. “He had found a love so real, so pure” declare the lyrics.The extraordinary Torsten the Bareback Saint can't fail to provoke, raise a smile and carry anyone along with its sheer verve. Torsten’s itinerant life is evoked in 22 songs portraying encounters, frustration, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Tonight, in the Faroe Islands, we’re going to find the greatest dancer.” It’s not an exhortation which often rings out. It could even be a first time The Faroes have been invited to demonstrate their disco prowess. Sister Sledge are on stage and about to launch into their 1979 Chic-produced world-wide smash “He’s the Greatest Dancer”.This, though, is 2014 and the Sledge sisters are playing G! Festival, the Faroes’ annual celebration of their own culture and popular music. The other Nordic countries are here too – bands from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are playing.But G! is about the Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Eighties revival, as is now well documented, has lasted far longer than the actual Eighties. And Elly “La Roux” Jackson is a vital figure in maintaining its durability, coming as she did to massive fame just as the effects of the turn-of-the-millenium club scene electroclash were wearing off, and making sure that plinky-plonky electropop keyboards, icy attitude and sculpted hair were kept on the cultural agenda.Her musical style was entirely distinctive, if a little piercing – it was no surprise that she achieved the success she did, so complete was her mix of sound, look and persona. It Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Lewis: L'AmourImagine a very subdued Antony Hegarty whispering over the spookiest moments of Angelo Badalamenti’s music for Twin Peaks. Or conjure up a marriage of Arthur Russell’s shimmering World of Echo and John Martyn at his most intimate, but shorn of all but the most necessary instrumentation. To say that L’Amour, the only album by Lewis, is arresting underplays it. This is one of the most direct and affecting series of songs ever captured in a studio. Yet until a few years ago it was unknown and, even then, only available as a dodgy download with added colour from the scratches Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The most notorious case of the BBC banning a pop record was the episode of the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" in 1977, which was of course the year of Her Maj's Silver Jubilee. "That was genuinely dangerous," Paul Morley intoned gravely (the record that is, rather than its banning), though as with several of the cases examined here, this one wasn't quite as open and shut as it seemed.The Beeb had been cheerfully - or at least unprotestingly - airing the disc on radio until the moment when the band swore at Bill Grundy on TV. It was Malcolm McLaren's bizarrely-dressed band of urchins Read more ...
joe.muggs
As dance music once more sweeps the mainstream, we're returned to the situation of the 1990s where singer and song can seem to become a little detached. Parades of “featured vocalists” deliver refrains for the producer teams who are queueing up to repeat the success of Route 94, Clean Bandit, Duke Dumont and above all Disclosure. And as the field gets more crowded, so the requirements for the singers to sit back, know their place and deliver the simplest hooks become more pressing.Some new generation singers do manage to step into the spotlight of course. Rita Ora parlayed her big hit with DJ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Movies about the music industry often end up being bombastic or twee or merely idiotic. This one, written and directed by John Carney (who made 2006's not entirely dissimilar Once), picks its way carefully around the pitfalls to tell a story of love, loss and pop songs with sweetness and wit.You wouldn't automatically visualise Keira Knightley as Indie Pop Girl, but she steps up winningly as Greta, a budding songwriter who prizes her music and doesn't want it prostituted on TV talent shows or bastardised to fit marketing strategies. She's in a seemingly idyllic (uh-oh) relationship with Dave Read more ...