rock
Phoebe Michaelides
Texan trio Khruangbin are a rare concoction, psychedelic rockers, for sure, but seamed with all manner of global influences, notably Thai pop but also running the gamut from Latin sounds to Middle Eastern scaling. Hitting the UK in support of their second album, Con Todo El Mundo, they initially presented an aloof front, which was compromised briefly by a minor technical glitch.This didn’t distract from the band’s striking retro-future aesthetic, especially bassist-singer Laura Lee, who wore a chic white leotard and red thigh-high boots like a supersonic empress from a kitsch old sci-fi film Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s hard to be sure if Rakal, Bella and Alice from Dream Wife are a rock’n’roll band or a girl gang with guitars. Either way, their debut album has got some cracking Riot Grrrl-flavoured tunes and a stridently feminist, in-your-face attitude. There is nothing demure about this trio and they really don’t care what your thoughts on that might be.Like Blondie on rocket fuel or Bikini Kill with better songs, Dream Wife is a set of thrilling tunes of raw guitar from Alice Go and the harpy-like vocals Rakel Mjöll. “Hey Heartbreaker” comes on like turbo-powered glam rock and a kick in the nuts, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The “insider’s guide to the music business” tag attached to Hits, Hype and Hustle: An Insider's Guide to the Music Business (BBC Four) dangles the carrot of all kinds of clandestine scams being exposed, such as extortionate recording contracts, systematic chart-rigging or Mafia rackets involving cut-out records. Instead, this episode was merely a meander through the history of live performances in rock music.Our host was John Giddings, a veteran agent and promoter who has worked with almost everyone you can think of, from the Stones and U2 to Genesis, Bowie and Madonna, and currently runs the Read more ...
Barney Harsent
With the possible exception of Talking Heads, I can’t think of another band who had such an exceptional run of early albums as Simple Minds. After a promising but uneven debut, they released Real to Real Cacophony in 1979 and barely put a foot wrong for five (some might argue six) albums.Big Music (2014) was a knowing look over a shoulder; a direct reference to the stark electronic thrum of their early albums, and one which largely eschewed the later stadium pomp. In doing so, it was open to accusations of mannered pastiche – some thought it an odd choice for a band that had once set so much Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Since releasing their first record, Bingo Masters Breakout, Mark E Smith (b 1957) has led The Fall through some of rock music’s most extreme and enthralling terrain, cutting a lyrical and musical swathe that few other artists can match. An outsider, self-confessed renegade, and microphone-destroying magus, Smith has seen dozens if not hundreds of musicians pass through the ranks of The Fall over the last 34 years. With their 28th studio album featuring a line-up that’s as stable as it gets in The Fall's rickety table of elements, they continue to make music like no other band, young or old. Read more ...
howard.male
Growing up with the music of David Bowie is probably not the best grounding for being a music critic because it raises expectations unreasonably high for every other adventurous musician one happens upon. When I first heard the intense, bordering-on-hysterical music of Merrill Garbus (the main creative force behind Tune-Yards) eight or so years ago, I actually had to get up from my desk and pace the room. I was so excited to hear something that both acknowledged pop and rock templates and crushed them underfoot. But with love comes responsibility. But unfortunately Garbus seems to have Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Many hard rock aficionados say that Motörhead’s greatest work was all with the “classic” line-up of Lemmy, drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor and guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke (who died last week aged only 67 - this review was written before that news came through). While there’s no denying their 1976-82 output was storming, Motörhead’s later career contained multitudes of gems that were its match. The band’s guitarist for this period, for 31 years from 1984 until Lemmy’s death, was Phil Campbell. He now releases the debut album by a band he formed with his three sons shortly after his Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Readers familiar with Nick Coleman’s 2012 memoir The Train in the Night will know before embarking on this book that the author suffered the worst possible fate for a music journalist: deafness, a problem (Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss) which began in 2007, had improved somewhat by 2010, declined catastrophically, then partially returned in his “good ear” before a severe sinus infection in 2015 wreaked further havoc.In the period when he was granted some respite, Coleman binged - he calls it harvesting - listening obsessively to particular singers and songs, “frantically stashing Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Five years might not, at first, seem like a long time between albums, certainly when you consider that even tectonic shift left the Avalanches in its wake while they were creating Wildflower. But a lot has happened to Californian indie rockers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club during that time. Not least, drummer Leah Shapiro has undergone surgery – crowdfunded by BRMC devotees – for a serious brain condition, and her road to recovery has been mapped out for her by a surgeon who also happens to be a fan of the band. There is, it's fair to say, a lot of love in the room.As well as showing Read more ...
Joe Muggs
If you see any list of greatest living drummers and the Australian Jim White isn't on it, you should look at it askance. Since he started Dirty Three in the early '90s, White has played with the cream of global alt-rock musicians: the Nick Caves, PJ Harveys, Cat Powers and Will Oldhams. But he's way, way more than a sideman, and the closer he is to the front of the stage, the more interesting the music will be.His playing is uniquely conversational and interactive, locking into and rolling around whatever foil is presented to it, often making him closer to a free jazz player than a rock Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Monterey Pop Festival in California in mid-June 1967 was a key event in the history of festival culture. There had been music festivals before in the US – Newport Folk springs to mind – but Monterey marked the point where the whimsical trend for “renaissance fairs” combined with the rising first blaze of rock music, born of psychedelia, all marinated thoroughly in LSD-flavoured happenings and love-ins. And, of course, it was filmed by DA Pennebaker, making it a visual blueprint, ripe for imitation, influencing countless generations into the idea of festivals as miniature countercultural Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Liam Gallagher is a great rock star. However, he often comes across as not a likeable person. He’s called himself “a cunt” on more than one occasion. But he bleeds inarticulate insouciance and arrogant rage. He doesn’t raise even half a smile throughout this whole gig. He carries himself with a chin-jutting, I-dare-you posture that adds up to charisma. And he can sneer-sing the hell out of a song. All that stuff used to be what we wanted from our singers before the post-Travis era of fleece-wearing, kindly, average-guy-next-door rockers.He comes on, parka zipped to the top, just like his Read more ...