rock
Thomas H. Green
Jack White’s last couple of albums, Boarding House Reach from 2018 and Fear of the Dawn from April this year, were both driven by experimentalism, dipping into electronics, hip hop, noise and more. They were both, to differing degrees, admirable in intent, coming from an artist perceived as zealously retro, but they were also only partially successful.Entering Heaven Alive is a less wilful beast and, in terms of enjoyably straightforward songwriting, the better for it. It will, naturally, and as is undoubtedly intended, be viewed of-a-piece with Fear of the Dawn, since the latter only came Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Sweetness never lasts too long at a Haim gig. No sooner had Alana Haim, the youngest of the Californian siblings, finished a speech about her delight about being back in Glasgow by announcing she was going to “smell the f****** roses” then bass-playing elder sister Este piped up with “I’m smelling my armpits. They are ripe.” It summed up a chat-heavy show that at times felt like part gig, part stand-up comedy try-out.For all the banter, which reached such an amount that Alana quipped at one stage she felt all they’d done was talk, the trio have an assurance about playing large venues. An Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
We music journos miss stuff too. This writer had not come across New Zealand-based Canadian singer Tami Neilson before, despite the fact she’s been around for over a decade and this is her sixth studio album. How did I miss her?Kingmaker contains the best kind of raw heartfelt country and scalpel-sharp lyricism, catchy songs spiked with a sassy rockabilly twang that propels them towards fresh territory. It boasts direction and energy which, with any justice, would see it racking up sales well beyond the niche. In short, an absolute zinger of an album.Neilson hails from a family of singers, Read more ...
Tom Carr
Despite not matching the success of their fellow New York post-punk colleagues, The Strokes, Interpol have nonetheless carved out a respectable path for themselves since their 2002 debut Turn on the Bright Lights. Occupying the darker edges of indie rock, they are the shadier counterpoint to the eccentricities of Julian Casablancas and co, their albums consistently making the UK Top 10 for the past two decades.Returning after four years with their latest effort, The Other Side of Make-Believe, its origins have a familiar-sounding tale to many recent albums: recording began in 2020, each of Read more ...
Joe Muggs
James Bay couldn’t be more unhip if he had pelvic removal surgery. He is so middle of the road that he could be a cat’s eye. Everything about him is old before his time – he was inspired to pick up a guitar by hearing “Layla”, he sings in a husky transatlantic semi-Celtic voice, he exists in a continuum of soft rock that runs from the start of AOR through U2, David Gray and the Coldplay imitation explosion of the 00s through to Ed Sheeran and Louis Capaldi.And he is also very, very, very good at doing what he does indeed. This album makes no bones about his positioning. The opener “ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
At the beginning of this film, Mick Jagger says: “What most documentaries do is repeat the same thing over and over… all the mythology is repeated until it becomes true.” He’s right, as he so often is. This latest attempt to prise open the enigma of the Rolling Stones’ indefatigable frontman reveals nothing a reasonably observant Stones fan won’t already know.The film is the first of a quartet, the others being about Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and the sorely-missed drummer Charlie Watts. Watts aside, they do at least contain new interviews with their subjects, who are all reliably Read more ...
Barney Harsent
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” That’s the rule, right? Unless, of course, what happens is that you form a pop-rock act with a remarkable ear for a route-one hook and a direct line to the emotional core of teenagers everywhere. In that case, you definitely don’t stay in Vegas. You take the world by storm while leaving critics largely scratching their heads and saying, “I don’t get it”.Mercury – Act 2, the follow up to last year’s Mercury – Act 1 (and released, confusingly, in a two-disc set with its older sibling), won’t change any of that for frontman Dan Reynolds and co. Fans will Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Last days of June 2022, I sit in my writing hut. My liver is radioactive jelly, my nose reinforced concrete, my leg muscles marathon-cramped, and poisoned perspiration rolls down my forehead, stinging my eyeballs.You’ll already have seen a trillion Twittering threepenny-bit reports on Glastonbury, but you haven’t taken this trip, I promise. So stroll in, fall over, pick yourself back up, take it all in, sniff it all up, drink it all down. Let’s do this.THURSDAY 23rd JUNEFinetime, my regular Glastonbury partner and photographer, is very proud of the tent he’s bought me from Lidl. My own tent Read more ...
Tim Cumming
A few spots of rain greeted the arrival of the Rolling Stones on BST Hyde Park’s stage on Saturday night, and after “Street Fighting Man”, as Mick Jagger dedicated the show to the much-loved and lamented drummer Charlie Watts, a rainbow appeared over the stage. Then the band powered into the daylight half of their set, heavy on the Sixties pop end of their catalogue – a singalong revival of “Out of Time”, an angular, muscular, heart-racing “19th Nervous Breakdown”, and a delicate “She’s a Rainbow” giving way to a warm, oozy “Tumbling Dice” and the mournful guitars and horns of the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Strictly Ballroom aside, I’ve never been entirely persuaded by Baz Luhrmann. Once you rip open the plush packaging of his films, you often just find satin and tissue paper inside. Elvis isn’t his worst movie (they can’t take that accolade away from Moulin Rouge!) but it isn’t the monumental ode to a great American legend that one hoped it might have been.Hats off to Luhrmann’s leading man Austin Butler, at least, who makes a heroic stab at stepping into Elvis’s blue suede shoes and Las Vegas jumpsuits. He doesn’t really resemble the King, but with help from lighting, makeup and some jittery, Read more ...
Mark Kidel
I'm at the New Theatre in Oxford. Elvis Costello is playing through the final stages of his 2022 UK tour. The venue is full of memories: I saw The Kinks and Tom Jones here in the 1960s and then The Who in the early 70s. On my left, there’s Paul Conroy who first introduced me to Elvis in 1977 – when he was involved in launching his career at Stiff Records – and on my right, Tom Webber, a super-talented 22 year-old singer from Didcot, Paul’s latest passion, and according to many veterans who have heard him, a potential new star, for whom Paul has come out of retirement to manage, along with his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Summer has arrived outside and sunny sounds are blasting from the speakers at theartsdesk on Vinyl. But not just sunny sounds, to be truthful, also sounds that cover most of the human emotional range, all from plastic discs in varying colours. Check in below for over 8000 words on music, from Afro-electro to Cornish rock to tango to genres beyond naming. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHShelf Lives Yes, Offence (Sorry Mom)Juddering, sweary, punkin’, sneering electro-rock is the game of London-based duo Shelf Lives, fronted by single-monikered Canadian frontwoman Sabrina and Brit producer-guitarist Read more ...