rock
Veronica Lee
A 90-minute biographical documentary about Bruce Springsteen, you may think, is for Springsteen fans only. But really anyone who is interested in fame, friendship, family relationships and the creative process will have enjoyed this – a revealing mix of personal testimony, The Boss reading from his recently released autobiography of the same title, Springsteen family home movies, and rarely seen footage of his early career.For music fans, the most interesting section was where Springsteen talked about his influences – they are wide and varied, and have a noticeably large number of British Read more ...
Barney Harsent
“One thing there's not is the big Metallica ballad – it's all pretty uppity,” said Lars Ulrich of Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, Metallica’s first album for the best part of a decade. If we ignore, for a moment, the Trump-esque grasp of language and assume he meant uptempo rather than arrogant, the drummer appears to be a master of understatement as soon as opener “Hardwired” tears out of the gate, all rabid intent and sweary barking.It’s a tempo that you’d imagine would be difficult to keep up for a group that’s made up of, in the main, men in their 50s, and you’d be right. So, after the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Good grief, was Out of Time really 25 years ago? This was the seventh studio album from the li'l ole band from Athens, Georgia, and the one with which they finally cracked open the mainstream international market. This was when people still used to buy CDs, and a time when it was still possible for bands to sustain slow-growing careers which built steadily from the ground upwards. Having been one of the trailblazers of America's mid-Eighties alternative rock movement, growing a faithful following through college radio and endless touring, REM had had it moderately large with their Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The last time Genesis Breyer P Orridge was in the UK, it was to touch down and talk about life, art, magic and strange encounters as part of COUM, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and PTV3 at the October Gallery's William Burroughs centenary show back in 2015.Since then, there has been a return to music – earlier this year, the entire catalogue of Psychic TV and PTV3 was reissued on Dias Records, much of it for the first time in digital format. Given that there was a campaign to release 23 live albums on the 23rd of each month (a Guinness World record), there's quite a lot of archive to Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s 58 years since “Britain’s answer to Elvis Presley” had his first top 10 hit and now he’s back, and back to his roots, with a new CD, Just… Fabulous Rock ‘n’ Roll, released by Sony with whom, at the grand old age of 76, he has signed a lucrative new contract. And don’t mock. It’s a terrific album: 15 classic songs including a “duet” with Elvis Presley, without whom.Recorded at the Blackbird Studio in Nashville, where the likes of Dolly Parton, Sheryl Crow, Hank Williams Jr, Taylor Swift and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers have worked, it’s produced by Steve Mandile of country quintet. Sixwire Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It was 2008 when The Early Years went into the studio to begin work on the follow-up to their impressive self-titled debut. Having pretty much set out the blueprint for many, if not all, of the kraut-esque bands who followed in their wake, there was disagreement on where to go next: further down the same path or sideways onto softer, more experimental ground? Songs or structures? Klaus Dinger or Michael Rother?It was a disagreement that led to the abandonment of the project, until now, almost a decade later: the result, released on Sonic Cathedral, is such a beautifully balanced feat that it’ Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There's an eeriness about this record that comes of it being so very perfectly anachronistic. TOY have formerly mined various parts of experimental rock history, notably Krautrock, and on their collaboration with Natasha “Bat For Lashes” Khan, some wild psychedelic rock from all corners of the planet. And certainly you can hear the chug of 1970s Dusseldorf sublimated into the grooves here on their third album – but the overwhelming sense is that this record exists somewhere around 1988 or 1989, back when indie truly meant indie.Yes, that does mean there's a feyness and reticence to the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Jon Bon Jovi may be many things – a rock star, heartthrob and possessor of a fine haircut, to name but a few. The jury's still out, however, on whether he's actually a great singer. The consensus is more that Bon Jovi's voice is a character instrument and one that works best with Richie Sambora's guitar. Little wonder then, that when the guitarist left in 2014, the band struggled to recapture their old magic. Still, two years have now elapsed, since when many sonic adjustments have been made. So have they now regained their old mojo?This House Is Not for Sale certainly starts well enough Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After the success of 2014’s Aquostic, which saw the band shift nearly half a million albums, Status Quo are back with more of the same to see whether they can repeat the trick.The big lie about the Quo is that their entire career has been based on this very premise: turf out a load of three-chord, feelgood, 12-bar boogie blues; tour; repeat to fade. In fact, there’s rather more to them than that, and I don’t mean the reedy psych of “Matchstick Men” either. Transitional, early Seventies LPs Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon and Dog of Two Head, document a band who could write and play groove-led blues Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Revolution Radio is a title that can only bring to mind The Clash. To be more specific, it feels like a confabulation of “This Is Radio Clash” and “Revolution Rock”. The spiritual great-grandfather of this album, however, would be The Ramones, punk’s New York progenitors. In the wake of Nirvana’s demise, Green Day set a goofy new cartoon template for punk with their hugely successful Dookie album, then topped charts worldwide with 2004’s stadium power pop protest American Idiot. After a trio of let’s-just-have-fun-in-the-studio affairs - ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! – their new one sees them Read more ...
Bernadette McNulty
Trying to pip the release of Mat Whitecross’s documentary Supersonic to the post, this brief hack through the BBC’s archive throws together a galloping overview of Oasis’s rise and fall, narrated by their own interviews and quotes. Arguably Oasis built a career on the consistent entertainment value of their soundbites rather than the long-term quality of their songs, so this wasn’t exactly a hard search, nor does it throw up anything you hadn’t heard before. Throughout, the music plays second fiddle, barely named or dated, flaring up in the background like an ambulance alarm, creating a jive- Read more ...
Ralph Moore
theartsdesk meets Christine McVie on a sunny Friday afternoon in September; the Warner Brothers boardroom (with generous hospitality spread) is suitably palatial. We’re the first media interview of the day, so she’s bright and attentive. McVie was always the member of Fleetwood Mac who you’d want to adopt: the most approachably human member of a band constantly at war with itself. Readily admitting that she’s the “peacekeeper” in the band, the singer/songwriter behind such Mac classics as “Everywhere” and “You Make Loving Fun” is as sweet and serene as you’d hope she would be.She’s here to Read more ...