rock
Guy Oddy
Mike Scott has never been afraid to call on high-brow literary influences in his songwriting – 2011’s An Appointment With Mr Yeats album being the most obvious example. Now, almost forty years (on and off) into the Waterboys’ career, Scott takes a more all-encompassing view on the influences that have fired up his literate yet soulful rock’n’roll: be they musical, geographical or bookish.The title track, which opens Where the Action Is, is a vamp on Robert Parker’s Northern Soul classic “Let’s Go Baby” and makes it clear that Scott and his crew won’t be revisiting the band’s Raggle Taggle Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Due to exciting matters beyond theartsdesk on Vinyl’s control there’s been a slight delay to this month’s edition but, never fear, to ensure we cover all that’s juicy, we’re doing a special two-volume version, with Part 2 coming next week. Watch this space. As ever, all life on plastic is here, from new to re-issued, from pop to techno to Northern soul and far, far beyond. Dive in.VINYL OF THE MONTHBlack Flower Future Flora (SDBAN/N.E.W.S.)Here at theartsdesk on Vinyl we’re fans of knitwear-loving Belgian five-piece Black Flower. Why wouldn’t you be? Their output so far, three albums and a Read more ...
Owen Richards
For a time, it looked like Catfish and the Bottlemen might finally be the next-gen guitar band with crossover appeal. Though that never quite came to pass, their new show promoting latest album The Balance proves why the indie faithful value them as Britain’s guiding light. Despite the band being Welsh, it’s hardly a hometown gig - Llandudno is nearer to Liverpool - but Cardiff greeted them like prodigal sons. Opener and recent single “Leftovers” led straight into breakout hit “Kathleen”, and the crowd were immediately part of the band, giving every chorus their all. With a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The last thing many were expecting from Rokia Traoré’s opening appearance at this year’s Brighton Festival was an Afro-psychedelic head-fry, yet she and her four-piece band prove thoroughly capable of swirling our minds right off out of it. When she returns at the end of the concert and announces she’s going to play one last song. A voice shouts out, “Make it a long one!” Happily, it is. The final number, “Köté Don”, is a culmination of the evening’s ethos, dragging listeners away once more into precisely estimated - yet elastic - patterns of rockin’, revolving minimalism.Dating back 16 Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Before we get to the music, there’s the title of Clinic’s first album in seven years to deal with. It comes from the title of a 1970s Granada TV series, The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, a northern entertainment revue presented by, among others, Bernard Manning. The surviving episodes of the show, with the blue dialed down for a wider audience, offer a veneered view of working men’s clubs that gently steers anything too unsavoury into the wings. As a symbol of Britain’s relationship with its past, it’s damn near perfect. Musically, the post-punk troupe’s return has a Read more ...
Owen Richards
Three albums in, and Vampire Weekend were due a shake-up. Enter Father of the Bride, by far their most ambitious record to date. It’s an 18-track behemoth featuring 14 musicians and six different producers, spanning from folk to jazz. It may be a bit kitchen sink, but it’s also their most exciting release since their eponymous debut.Lead single “Harmony Hall” has already been flooding the airwaves, with a Primal Scream-esque chorus that threatens to follow you to the grave. It’s addictive straight pop that continues on tracks “This Life” and “Bambina”, Ezra Koenig’s vocals finding those Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Editors’ last album, the electronic-infused Violence, was hailed as a big departure for the indie rock band on its release a little over a year ago. It wasn’t really, it was simply the latest stage of a transformation that can be traced back to guitarist Chris Urbanowicz’s 2012 departure, and first came to light on 2015’s In Dream. For their 2018 release, the band handed over complete control of the production process to Blanck Mass, otherwise known as Ben Power of electronic drone duo Fuck Buttons. It was a fairly ballsy move by the band to offer their songs as a Blanck canvas – Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Never quite the household names in Britain that they were in their native USA, Daryl Hall and John Oates can nonetheless claim to be the best-selling duo in the history of popular music. With 40 million records sold, six US chart-topping singles and a heap of gold and platinum albums, they come out ahead even of such luminaries as Simon & Garfunkel or the Everly Brothers.The days of selling shed-loads of discs may have passed, but Hall & Oates are musicians to the core, and playing live is in their blood. This Wembley gig was prefaced by big-screen clips from Hall’s TV show Live from Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Suede finish “Sabotage”. It’s a mid-paced, elegant number set off by swirling, circling central guitar. Frontman Brett Anderson hangs from his microphone stand on the left apron of the stage to deliver it, with the lights down low. Afterwards he paces back to his bandmates, body taut, hair a-flop. He tells the audience he’s been involved in a long ongoing experiment; “standing in front of VOX AC30 amps for 30 years.” The resulting problem, he adds in a rising shout, “is that I can’t hear you.”It’s a showbiz shot, dryly delivered, but it works. He keeps coming back to this, demanding a louder Read more ...
Owen Richards
“Our attendees are a select group, but we have a connection,” remarked Damon Albarn at the end of The Good, the Bad & the Queen’s set. He’s not wrong – much of the band had outgrown Cardiff’s Great Hall 25 years ago, but it proved the perfect venue for this musical love-in.It was a show of two halves, quite literally. The first dedicated to the band’s recent album Merrie Land, and the second to their eponymous debut (which unbelievably is 12 years old). It’s clear why: both are concept albums with their own sound and themes. This time we’ve moved out to the seaside, emphasised by the Read more ...
james.woodall
If you were a fan of “Rock Island Line” when it became a pop hit, you’d have to be at least in your mid-70s now. In 1956, Paul McCartney heard Lonnie Donegan perform it live in Liverpool, and Paul’s rising 77. How many below that age know it is moot, though that doesn’t necessarily disqualify it from the hour-long documentary treatment. For blues lovers, it’s a benchmark. “Rock Island Line” dates from the late 1920s and was first recorded in 1934.Billy Bragg dependably and articulately fronted up this BBC Four history of the song, a protest paean to, or (as it might once have been called) a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day is tomorrow which means that your local record shop will be packed with all sorts of exclusive, limited edition goodies as well as major label cash-ins. There are hundreds of releases but many aren't available before the day itself so below are the ones that theartsdesk on Vinyl got their hands on this year. Dive in.theartsdesk on Vinyl's RSD ChoiceHot 8 Brass Band Working Together EP (Tru Thoughts)The look of this release fairly shouts Record Store Day Special. In a transparent plastic sleeve embossed with the band name/logo in gold, it’s a bright blue transparent 12”. On Read more ...