rock
Mark Kidel
Moonlight Benjamin, the fierce and deep-voiced vocalist from Haiti, is a powerful presence on stage. On her second album, she is once again supported by a tight cohort of French musicians led by guitarist Matthis Pascal, who has written the music for Moonlight’s Creole lyrics. The band play raunchy yet sophisticated blues, tinged with the bounce of Guadeloupean Zouk, as on the opening track "Nap Chape" and a good dose of pile-driving heavy rock, ably demonstrated on songs such as "Tchoule" and "Belekou".Moonlight Benjamin has a rich contralto voice, at time seductively soft and at others Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Matt Shultz was clearly taking no chances. The Cage the Elephant frontman appeared onstage underneath a large umbrella, presumably bought to cope with the day’s deluge of rain. In the ever effervescent Shultz’s hands it was swiftly used as a prop, kickstarting a lively evening of old fashioned rock 'n’ roll.These are heady times for the Kentucky outfit, who arrived fresh from winning their second Grammy for fifth album, Social Cues. It provided the backbone of a lengthy set that suggested they have outlasted many of their contemporaries by serving up invigorating versions of classic styles, Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It might have been 24 hours after Valentine’s Day, but James McGovern still seemed to have a touch of romance in his head. At one stage during the Murder Capital’s bruising set he referenced his floral-patterned shirt as evidence that he was feeling the spirit of the previous day, and perhaps that should not surprise, for the Murder Capital are a band with plenty of heart.They are also an outfit with intelligence, both in their songs and in the clever way the Dublin fivesome structured this gig. The first half possessed intensity but mostly of the slow burning sort, a tension that you felt Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Roland Orzabal, co-founder and lead guitarist of Tears for Fears, laughs to himself often during this documentary — the latest in the BBC’s often-excellent, always-forensic Classic Albums series. “I agree, I agree, it sounds great,” says Orzabal. He’s listening to “Shout,” the band’s 1984 Billboard No. 1 hit. “There’s something about it,” he chuckles, “I believed it.” The documentary focuses on Orzabal and Curt Smith, Tears for Fears’ founders and frontmen, and the development of their album-topping record Songs From The Big Chair (1985). It tells the somewhat unlikely tale of how a cathartic Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Huey Lewis and the News were an unlikely mid-Eighties phenomenon. Their Sports album was a mega-success for a band already approaching early middle age. Their Fifties feel, given a contemporary polish and boosted by association with cinematic juggernaut Back to the Future, sat comfortably (yet incongruously) alongside the likes of Madonna and Duran Duran. They were, however, always shorthand for middle-of-the-road, their appeal satirized by Brett Easton Ellis who made them a favourite of American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. It should, then, come as no surprise that their latest album is Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Without wanting to get into what constitutes punk, we can, at least, agree that brevity is to be lauded? Right? Good, because at 26 minutes, Green Day’s 13th studio album, Father of All Motherfuckers, is a volley delivered at velocity. That’s not to say that all 10 tracks speed along at the same Ramones-esque breakneck pace however. There’s room for changes in speed and style as the pop-punk’n’roll band deliver an album high on energy and low on political outrage. Despite no shortage of source material, any fans hoping for American Idiot #2 will find something very different in store. Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
In photographer Jim Marshall’s heyday in the 60s and 70s, before the music business became corporate and restrictive, and before Marshall unravelled – he was partial to cars, cocaine and guns as well as cameras – musicians asked for him, they trusted him, and he never violated their trust because, he said, “these people have let you into their life”. The pictures he took of the Beatles, Janis Joplin (pictured below), John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Duane Allman, Joni Mitchell and countless others are startlingly intimate, as if, one of his friends observes, there is no one else in the room.Alfred Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Drums away: Stewart Copeland, drummer with The Police and a score of other groups, composer for films, video games and operas, now beams enthusiastically at us from the small screen. He’s writer and presenter of this three-part Adventures in Music series for BBC Four, which has as its thesis his view that music is what made us human, differentiated us from the Neanderthal and was our earliest form of communication. Sounds came before words. Copeland was imprinted early. He remembered sitting in a dark room aged seven, listening to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, and recognising in some way Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Bombay Bicycle Club have a knack for quasi-prophetic titles. Their fourth album, So Long, See You Tomorrow, released in February 2014, turned out to be their last, at least for a while. For when the accompanying tour concluded at London’s Earls Court – the final event before the wrecking ball deprived London of another iconic venue – the band decided they’d had enough.They’d come together at school in north London and “after ten years of doing this we thought it was time for all of us to try something else”. Bassist Ed Nash released a solo album, singer-guitarist Jack Steadman immersed Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
18 years ago, Electric Soft Parade, centred around brothers Alex and Thomas White, were the latest hyped hope of indie kids and NME-type media. However, their might-have-been moment imploded when they moved too fast for their fans, rocketing off in wildly creative flourishes rather than sticking to a predictable formula. They – and associated break-away bands – have since produced a fascinating array of musical activity, often boasting an inventive yet old-fashioned feel for orchestration.Their latest album, their fifth, is a change of direction. Written and sung by Alex, recorded and Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Now the first generation of real rock stars are finishing their fifth recording decade, the question presents itself: what should a rocker do when their career has gone on much longer than they'd planned? 2019 came up with some excellent answers. Some old-timers continued to play loud, others grew more mellow. But one thing they all had in common was that their music journeyed deep into the imagination. Of all the rock-veteran albums released, none felt more widescreen than Springsteen's Western Stars. After 40 years of straining every vocal sinew, the gravelly singer tried his Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As one decade gives way to the next, the beginning or end of the ten-year cycle rarely yields anything cut and dried. With pop music, a host of decade-related platitudes have no respect for the decade-to-decade switch. Depending on points of view, the Sixties didn’t begin until 1962, 1963 or 1964. With the Seventies, the kick-off could have been 1971 or 1972. Or maybe 1976 or 1977.Even so, it’s clear when some groundswells originated. Most of the early Seventies’ successful glam rockers were active in the preceding decade. Bolan, Bowie, Slade, Sweet and Alvin Stardust had all done their Read more ...