punk
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The concept album can be a tricky beast; Titus Andronicus’s 2010 epic The Monitor more so than most. How to follow up an album that loosely ties your frontman’s break-up to the American Civil War, complete with spoken-word interludes voiced by contemporary punk artists playing historical figures, in which rousing choruses bounce surprisingly out of 14-minute rock operas? The answer, as provided by Local Business, is that you don’t.Titus’s third full-length is instead probably as close to a straight-up rock record as they have in them, bearing in mind that we are talking about a band from Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The three-act drama has an established formula: setup, confrontation, resolution. This first part is rarely noted for its thrilling highs and gasping lows - tension builds organically as characters and themes are introduced before that first dramatic turning point.Contemplating ¡Uno!, the appropriately-named first of three albums Green Day are set to release at six-weekly intervals going into 2013, I am reminded of this structure and wonder whether in making this album something of an anti-climax the California punk veterans know exactly what they are doing. It wouldn’t be the first time they Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On the 35th anniversary of the year punk met the mainstream, it’s to be expected that retrospection and nostalgia are in the air. Television has had a go, albums are being reissued and old soldiers are telling their stories. By its very nature an anniversary suggests that things were cut and dried, that 1977 was a beginning or a marker in the sand. But the exhibition Someday All the Adults Will Die: Punk Graphics 1971-1984 at the Southbank’s Hayward Gallery Project Space and the publication of the related book Punk: An Aesthetic both underline that things aren’t and weren’t so clear.Both the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros: Global A Go-Go, StreetcoreLisa-Marie FerlaAs well as marking the 10th anniversary of Joe Strummer's death, 2012 would also have been the year the legendary Clash frontman turned 60. The reissue of these two albums, recorded with his last band the Mescaleros, is therefore doubly timely.The band's three albums built on the very best of the globe-trotting, more experimental themes that had begun to sneak into The Clash's work before they disbanded in 1985, but did so in a way that kept them vital and accessible to those of us raised on three-chord punk Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It's hard to hear P!nk without thinking of the kind of “punks” that scowl in the corners of American high-school movies, possibly befriending some “nerds”, revealing a sensitive side, and/or standing up to a “jock” at some crucial point in the plot. Angst and outsiderdom with a predictable designated role to play within a regimented and ritualised ecosystem. None of which is a bad thing as such – teen movies can be great, and so can P!ink albums, if you're in the mood. Or drunk. This is her sixth album since switching from R&B to punky-poppy-rocky-pop for 2001's M!zzundaztood, and the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
According to US television anchor Stephen Colbert, there are only three ways to end your career as a rock star: overdose, overstay your welcome or write Spiderman: The Musical. Rockers, he says, during a televised interview with LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy, don’t get to walk away - certainly not at the peak of their careers, when every album they release is still greeted with critical adulation and they’re capable of selling out Madison Square Garden.And yet, in April 2011, that’s exactly what the then 41-year-old New York performer and DJ chose to do. The Colbert interview, clips Read more ...
theartsdesk
Green Day: The Studio Albums 1990-2009Thomas H GreenPrior to a trilogy of new albums, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!, all to be released by the end of the year, a box set arrives containing the eight albums that brought Californian trio Green Day to this point. At the dawn on the Nineties, parallel to grunge’s hairy existential rock, there was another American punk explosion more directly imitative of Seventies originals such as The Clash and The Ramones. Alongside groups such as Rancid and The Offspring, Green Day led the charge and their first two albums, on the independent Lookout! label, lay out Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Describing the music of Franz Nicolay is a formidable task: it’s almost as easy to imagine the work of some of the bands he has loaned his considerable talents to in the past - most notably during his five years as a member of The Hold Steady - and then imagine the exact opposite. As proficient on accordion, saw and banjo as he is on keyboard or guitar; Nicolay’s music fuses elements of folk and punk with polka, gypsy and klezmer influences to create an articulate, joyful mix that is always entertaining.At least, that’s how I would have described it before my first listen to Do The Struggle, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Sex Pistols played their final live show on 14 January 1978 in San Francisco. According to the third and final programme in the Punk Britannia series, “for many, it would be the end of punk”. It certainly was for ex-Pistol John Lydon, who'd form Public Image Ltd. Taking on the task of tracing what happened next was a challenge. Nothing was neat. Loose ends, new strands and evolution of the existing meant it couldn’t be. If this programme succeeded, it was in portraying the turmoil that came in punk’s wake.Bringing order where there is chaos is always difficult. As an overview of the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
At the age of 65, you would be forgiven for thinking that punk rock high priestess Patti Smith has every justification for winding down (the odd eccentric covers collection to keep the kids amused aside, of course). Indeed, her actions of the past couple of years - the highly-acclaimed memoir Just Kids, the self-curated musical retrospective Outside Society - bear all the hallmarks of an artist in reflective mode. Banga, Smith’s first new material since 2004’s Tramp, comes full circle in a sense: it was recorded at New York’s Electric Lady studios with many of the same personnel as were Read more ...
howard.male
“We didn’t have a real agenda. We just wanted to play some tunes and have a good time.” Thus spoke the immaculately suited but still mischievous-looking Mick Jones. And thank goodness he said it because, from the off - even before the off - I didn’t think anyone would. The interviewer (his ideological preconceptions crumbling) protested, so unfortunately Jones had to qualify his unguarded statement by saying he couldn’t of course speak for the other members of The Clash. But I wish he’d just left what he said as a big fat V-sign to all those set on creating a revisionist version of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lydon is currently having a slight return. I caught PiL’s gig at Heaven a few weeks ago (featured as a bonus DVD disc on the deluxe edition of This Is PiL and reviewed elsewhere on theartsdesk). I wasn’t expecting much. Lydon, once the edgy heart of British punk, a mercurial, snidely uncomfortable presence, has graduated over the years into an eye-rolling pantomime dame and, of course, the butter ads and other misguided media forays forever tarnished his pithy societal spite. The concert, however, was visceral. PiL’s current incarnation are a musical force to be reckoned with and played for a Read more ...