rock
Russ Coffey
Not many bands have a reputation for passion quite like The Alarm. Right from the early Eighties, tracks like "68 Guns" attracted fans who wanted music to believe in – something with a message and a conscience. That ethos came from the band's driving force, singer Mike Peters. After 10 fruitful years, Peters disbanded The Alarm (in 1991) to pursue other projects. A decade later he resurrected the group with a new line up. Equals is their first album for eight years.Curiously, though, the LP starts off not with a bang, but a slight whimper. "Two Rivers" has one of the most lightweight Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There’s undoubtedly a memorable film to be crafted from the life of guitar legend and grand old survivor Eric Clapton – for instance, Melvyn Bragg made a very good South Bank Show about him in 1987 – but the longer this one goes on, the less it has to say. Nor is it obvious why it has been made now.Director Lili Fini Zanuck, who used Clapton’s song “Tears in Heaven” in her 1991 movie Rush, has assembled the piece from a patchwork of archive material with interviewees (including Clapton) present only in voice-over, identified by captions. This seems to have become customary documentary Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Gota Fría, or “cold drop”, is a Spanish weather phenomenon associated with violent rainstorms, when high pressure has caused a pocket of cold air to dissociate itself from the warmer clouds. Meteorologists, please excuse my basic and probably erroneous interpretation; the point here is that any person who’s experienced mental ill-health will likely relate to the idea of a sudden dip in temperature, a torrential downpour, and the accompanying isolation. On Gota Fría, the Peru-born, Bristol-based singer-songwriter Beth Rowley explores darkness and light via classic songwriting, delivered Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the cover of the 19 May 1979 issue of the music weekly Sounds was dominated by a photo of American rocker Ted Nugent, attention was also grabbed by a trail for a feature on “Heavy Metal…The New British Bands”. The two-page article it related to was headlined If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It. Under that were the words “The New Wave of British Heavy Metal: First in an Occasional Series”. The feature, by Geoff Barton, focussed on The Bandwagon, a heavy metal disco, and a triple-bill show at North London’s Music Machine with Angel Witch, Iron Maiden and Samson.Sounds had been buttering- Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Forgive the sports metaphor, but David Byrne knocked this one out of the park. Coming out of the concert at the Eventim Apollo, you felt that the presentation of popular music had changed - that to go on stage with a conventional band with the usual clichéd movements - everything from the wince of a complicated guitar solo to the vocalist waving to the crowd to join in - all should be banished to history’s dustbin. Likewise the whole set up on stage was new - Byrne’s band were entirely untethered to wires and able to move around the stage in complete choreographed fluidity. It is Read more ...
Ellie Porter
Concluding a trilogy of releases that began with the EPs Not the Actual Events (2016) and Add Violence (2017) – Bad Witch is being called an LP despite its six tracks clocking in at only 30 minutes, a discrepancy that reportedly led an exasperated Trent Reznor to sound out a pernickety fan in an online forum. Short and sharp opening track "Shit Mirror", despite lyrics that speak of "new world, new times, mutation", does feel a little like the NIN of old – that familiar industrial groove and shouty vocal combo – but as soon as that’s done and dusted, it’s swiftly followed by "Ahead of Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Eel Pie, the tiny eyot in the Thames, is not too a long walk from Twickenham stadium – within hollering distance, almost, if you had that kind of voice. And if anywhere could lay claim to being the nursery that provided the perfect growing conditions for The Rolling Stones, then Eel Pie and The Crawdaddy in Richmond would be it. Mick Jagger name-checked them both during the gig, and George Melly once said of its legendary music venue, “You could see sex rising from Eel Pie like steam from a kettle”.That head of steam pumped out the 1960s spirit of sex and liberation into the local and then Read more ...
theartsdesk
Since Glastonbury lies fallow this year, Download is the biggest British green field festival of the summer. 100,000 souls gathered to celebrate the canon of metal on the land around Donington Park racing circuit. The site has four stages, two outdoor, the Main Stage, featuring headliners Avenged Sevenfold, Guns’n’Roses and Ozzy Osbourne, and the Zippo Encore Stage, and two under canvas, the Dogtooth and Avalanche stages, as well as a large arena for the hammy activities of WWE NXT Wrestling and also an enclosure where men and women dressed in armour batter each other all weekend.Theartsdesk Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
“There’s a rhythm in the air around Memphis, there always has been,” Carl Perkins once said. "I don't know what it is, but it's magic." The city on the Mississippi lives up to its musical heritage with performance venues aplenty, and a host of museums dealing with its illustrious musical past: there's Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion with all its garish gold lamé costumes, cars and even private jets; Sun Studios is now a museum; and there is a Stax Museum, a Blues Museum and the much-praised Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum.Memphis-born music journalist, filmmaker and author Robert Gordon has Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It can be hard to put distance between an artist and their behaviour. Woody Allen films present a problem for some, while I, for one, will never see Tommy Robinson’s impressionist landscapes in the same light again. One rock musician who recently came under scrutiny is The Who frontman Roger Daltrey, after calling the #metoo phenomenon “obnoxious” and “salacious crap”, before adding, of his extra marital activity, “Come on, men are men,” and “there have been times when I’ve hurt her [his wife] and that’s upset me.” Sending hugs, Rog, sending hugs. His rejection of the zeitgeist also Read more ...
Echo & the Bunnymen, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review – Mac and Will hit the road with added strings
Guy Oddy
This Echo and the Bunnymen gig in Birmingham is one that almost didn’t happen, on a tour to promote the soon-to-be-released The Stars, the Oceans and the Moon, their first album since 2014’s Meteorites. With their beloved Liverpool FC playing Real Madrid in the Champions League final, the band initially tried to shift the show to another day and put out a press release stating that long-stays Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant wouldn’t be able to put their hearts and souls into things with their minds firmly focused on events in Kiev.It seems that their fans in the Midlands aren’t quite so Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s four albums all centre around off-kilter pop and flirtations with distortion; their latest LP, Sex & Food, carries this tradition forwards in a more laid-back manner. Their current European tour in support of the album seems to have lined up nicely with the schedules of American acts Deerhunter, Black Lips and Sam Evian (as well as much-hyped British act Boy Azooga), with all five artists descending on the Albert Hall in Manchester for the six-hour Strange Waves III.Between the criminally early start time of 5pm and Transport for Manchester’s bus timetabling Read more ...