pop
Kieron Tyler
Poliça aren’t lacking support. Jay Z posted one of their videos on his blog. Prince turned up to check out their live debut. Bon Iver's Mike Noyce sings on a couple of Give You the Ghost’s tracks. For an outfit whose debut album is only just getting its UK release (it was issued in the States in February), Poliça have got the jump on most contenders. They’ve also got an added leg up by having their origins in hip Minneapolis collective Gayngs. Most importantly, Give You the Ghost is great.Like Gayngs, Poliça – Polish for policy – aren’t a band. Both are projects drawing together producers and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Martin Schmidt of the US electronic experimental outfit Matmos once said, “If you make a living from your art, that starts to poison it. You can’t help thinking, how can I change this art to make a better living. The obvious answer is that you make it more palatable to more people.” It’s a statement that sums up the conundrum facing any creative person, excepting rich dilettantes, which is why it’s always a pleasure to be confronted by an album such as Black is Beautiful, the third from the duo of Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, who also record as Hype Williams.The pair have left a trail of Read more ...
Natalie Shaw
Cher Lloyd first appeared aged 16 on The X Factor with a storming cover of an unofficial bootleg version of “Turn My Swag On” - a song that peaked at just number 48 on the UK singles charts. Knowing so much about music at such a young age set her apart from the entire competition, and it’s no surprise that her debut album Sticks + Stones is the most feverish and bold set that anyone from the show has yet produced. Some 18 months after that first appearance, the singer headlined her first London show at a 2,500-capacity venue. Keeping it relatively intimate served a little too much as Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It began with a warning. Opening the fourth Tallinn Music Week, Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves cautioned, “In a free society, it’s risk-free. In an un-free society, it’s not risk-free. It’s not all fun.” From behind a hotel conference room lectern, he then began rolling a video of Russia’s Pussy Riot being arrested in Moscow a few days earlier. Not everyone can make their point, make their music, choose how they want to get it across.The contrast between Pussy Riot’s fate and a festival that celebrates new music in all its forms, held in a country bordering Russia, was marked by Read more ...
Natalie Shaw
It’s sometimes difficult to imagine that a new pop star can ever live up to even the most optimistic fan’s expectations. Spiralling hype and contagious squeals over mp3s are one thing, but with the subject standing before them to perform a full live set it’s all too often a different story - the cloak is removed and hark, there’s a human being behind it. A human being who talks, sings and performs songs we’ve never heard before! How are we supposed to love something clothed in properties from the ether?However, real pop fans always live in hope of stumbling across the star who can transcend Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Unlike his old buddy, Phil Collins, who now claims to be considered the “Antichrist of Music”, public consensus on Sting seems elusive. His popularity in the States has never wavered, but back home, it’s difficult to tell if the "tantric" one is generally considered to be something better or worse than a guilty pleasure. Last night, however, Sting was not suffering from any self-doubt. Nor lack of stamina. It was two and a quarter hours of flat-out “back to basics”. Or "Back to Bass", as he’s called this tour.The stage was bare save for a drum kit, some cables and five mic stands. It was Read more ...
ash.smyth
I figured there were two solid reasons to attend last night’s Florence + the Machine gig in North London. The first was that I’d given Ceremonials a fair few listens, and was beginning to conclude that the chaps at Island Records had identified what they thought constituted, hitherto, the "Florence sound", and then simply produced an entire album of it. I found the result somewhat less invigorating, less wild and haphazard than Lungs, F+tM’s debut, and wanted to know if it would be better on stage. The second was that, between her rather, um, “portable” lyrics and her high-impact manner Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Electropop royalty does not get more illustrious than this. VCMG stands for Vince Clarke (&) Martin Gore, who started out together in Depeche Mode, only for main songwriter Clarke to depart in 1981. Gore stayed in the band and took kinky leather into the pages of Smash Hits, while Clarke became a veritable Tintin-haired hit factory, discovering Alison Moyet, recontextualising Feargal Sharkey and eventually forming an enduring partnership with Andy Bell in Erasure. The latter duo released a new album last year which promised much but ploughed the same old high-energy furrow. Ssss, by Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This album caught me completely off guard. The Stranglers work of the late Seventies/early Eighties is classic post-punk pop but their critical and (slight) commercial comeback since 2004’s Norfolk Coast album has been less convincing. Giants, however, is a corker. The band’s oldest member, drummer Jet Black, may now be 73 – and is pictured on the CD wearing an oxygen mask – but this is the sound of a reinvigorated quartet utilising their last-gang-in-town status to create music that’s poignant, tuneful, and unafraid of adventure.Giants startles from the start, opening with instrumental “ Read more ...
Natalie Shaw
The X Factor has been rewriting the Gregorian calendar since its inception in September 2004. It’s now more acceptable (nay, expected) for major label pop acts’ careers to fall like dominos after the first year, while at the other end of the scale we’re sped into an accelerated, broader-spanning nostalgia - a longing sensation triggered mere minutes after the ITV1+1 broadcast. It’s with this in mind that the staging and characterisation of The X Factor Live caused such intrigue.Last year’s finalists were largely paraded before us, styled exactly how we saw them on television and singing songs Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The way Marina Diamandis was tweeting last year – samples include “I hate pop” and “I want to disappear into a k-hole of Cheetos and beer” – some were half expecting the girl who used to be pop’s Next Big Thing to give up. Not that her debut album, The Family Jewels, did badly exactly but, after all the hype, anything short of becoming a mini-Gaga was destined to be a disappointment. But Marina’s made of tougher stuff. She’s back, and this time around, she seems to really mean business.The Welsh prodigy has apparently thrown the kitchen sink at her new album, Electra Heart. With a production Read more ...