pop
Kieron Tyler
The death today at age 82 of trumpeter Kenny Ball makes him the first of the big three chart regulars of Britain’s trad jazz boom to pass away. Both Acker Bilk and Chris Barber are still with us. It’s easily forgotten, but trad actually was bigger than The Beatles. In January 1963, just as the Liverpool quartet were issuing their second single, “Please Please Me”, Ball was on a sell-out bill at north London’s massive Alexandra Palace. Ball beat them to the US charts, hitting number two there in early 1962 with “Midnight in Moscow”.Trad isn’t cool, and probably wasn’t then. But it was massive Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Crispy Ambulance: The Plateau Phase/The Durutti Column: LC/The Names: Swimming/The Wake: HarmonyPre-Madchester and before New Order’s breakout single “Blue Monday”, Manchester’s Factory Records was hard to penetrate. This quartet of reissues does a fine job in both dragging some great music out of the twilight and giving voice to the words subsequently written about the label. All are on the Factory Benelux imprint, resurrected to pay tribute to Factory’s Belgian counterpart which had been launched in 1980.The label’s early releases came in abstract sleeves, and most of those on Factory were Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Cut Copy me”, the opening track of Petula Clark’s first British studio album in six years, is beautiful. It could have been created by Saint Etienne at their most melancholy. Her voice almost a whisper, it’s the sound of shadows and uncertainty even with what sounds like a light touch of autotune. The title track follows. Similarly assured, it’s sparse and centred around a rippling piano. Then a by-rote, in-the-shadow-of-Adele version of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" breaks the spell.Accompanying “Crazy” are versions of “Imagine”, “Love me Tender”, Gershwin’s “He Loves and She Loves” and a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Who’s That Man – A Tribute to Conny PlankThe list of acts Konrad Plank worked with is a Hollywood Walk of Fame of Krautrock. As an engineer or producer he was behind seminal albums by Neu!, Cluster, Harmonia, La Düsseldorf and Kraftwerk. From outside Germany, Ultravox and Eurythmics came to him. Later-blooming locals like DAF sought him ought. Naturally, Brian Eno was around, both collaborating with Plank and bringing Devo to his studio to complete their first album. As the liner notes of this four-CD box set note, Plank turned U2 down, something Eno did not.Plank died Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
A confession: for much of this debut album from London fuzz-pop fivesome The History of Apple Pie, I have little to no idea what vocalist Stephanie Min is on about. Sweet and half-whispered, floating above crunchy bass and tuneful guitar riffage, it’s almost as if her vocals are there for effect rather than having something to say.But it’s not like contemporary pop is underrepresented by sloganeering and cheesy rhyming couplets, and when the music is this good who cares? Ten giddy teenage anthems thudding to earth packed with lust, heartache and the need to dance all night, Out of View is a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Writing about True without naming the elephant in the room was always going to be a challenge, even if the younger Ms Knowles’ next move had built on the more experimental sounds of her earlier work or “Stillness is the Move”, her 2009 collaboration with Dirty Projectors. But then “Losing You” dropped in October, and it just so happened to feature one of the greatest female R&B vocals since, well...The song is a gripping opener to this seven-track mini-album, Solange’s first release on Grizzly Bear’s Terrible imprint. Fusing choppy, tribal beats with an understated vocal performance, the Read more ...
fisun.guner
That ultimate art rocker David Bowie is 66 today. The Victoria & Albert Museum is opening with a major survey of Bowie the style icon this spring. What’s more, he’s just released a new single, with an album following in March. Fittingly, for an art school idol, he once wrote a song about his favourite artist Andy Warhol (“Andy Warhol looks a scream / Hang him on my wall / Andy Warhol, Silver Screen / Can't tell them apart at all”). It got a typically blank response when Bowie played it to its subject – not even a “Gee, David”. Still, although it's not a patch on "Space Oddity", it's a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Can’s The Lost Tapes towers over any of the other reissues theartsdesk has covered this year. Although not strictly a reissue – it collected unheard recordings from tapes which had lain in the band’s archive – it rewrote the story of the seminal German band, offering a new perspective on their creative process and what they had issued. More than any of this, its three discs were a great listen and as essential as any of their albums - Soundtracks, Tago Mago and Future Days.Re-reviewing The Lost Tapes is unnecessary, but taking it as a yardstick for the year’s other reissues is, by turns, Read more ...
theartsdesk
The House of Love: The House of LoveKieron TylerAfter The Jesus & Mary Chain, The House of Love were Creation Records’ next most-likely sons. Their melodies had an epic sweep, they had a top-notch songwriter in Guy Chadwick and, with Terry Bickers, a fabulous guitarist. Yet, after signing to a major label their potential was never achieved despite regularly packing major venues. Their first, eponymous, album – reissued here, 24 years on – is their finest hour. All that said, as the liner notes reveal, Creation were more convinced stablemates The Weather Prophets were more likely to happen Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It’s an expression of our collective souls coming together,” said The Beach Boys’ Mike Love of his band, in this celebration of their 2012 50th anniversary world tour and recent album That’s Why God Made the Radio. Subsequent to the making of Doin' it Again and during the ensuing global jaunt, Love announced he was ditching fellow Beach Boys Alan Jardine, David Marks and Brian Wilson, whom he had been sharing the stage with. Not much of a shelf life for this collective expression, with little chance of doing it again. Love’s own Beach Boys – without that trio – picked up the baton after Read more ...
theartsdesk
10cc: TenologyKieron Tyler10cc occupied a strange place. Balancing cleverness and humour, pop and the musically complex with an archness that was never far, they nonetheless managed to fix themselves, limpet-like, to charts. As this, their first box set, amply makes clear, they were about more than the singles and well-known albums like The Original Soundtrack. The four CDs and DVD reveal 10cc as mad scientists whose inventions were more disciplined than the complex stew of ingredients would suggest.Tenology – geddit: a typically 10cc-ish pun on phrenological head on the cover – Read more ...
peter.quinn
14 Grammy Awards, over 30 million albums sold, immortalised in song by Bob Dylan. It's hard to believe that Girl On Fire is only Alicia Keys's fifth studio album, such is the extent of her success. The singer-songwriter's previous release, The Element of Freedom, successfully mined the juxtaposition of powerful beats and understated vocals. And, following the solo piano amuse-bouche of “De Novo Adagio”, Girl On Fire initially looks set to deliver more of the same.The slow burner “Brand New Me”, the futuristic, cut-up beats and wobbly analogue synths of “When It's All Over”, the warm ambient Read more ...