rock
Russ Coffey
Fairport Convention in the abstract seem romantic and timely. Their Sixties folk-rock is being rediscovered by many of our best emerging songwriters; the late Sandy Denny is still written about; and their most famous graduate, Richard Thompson next month curates Meltdown 2010. However, in the concrete, the Fairports are a somewhat more problematic proposition. Over 19 incarnations in 43 years, they have recorded almost 50 albums. To top it all they are loved by their fans with a level of detail normally reserved for sci-fi gatherings. This all makes getting your head around Fairport Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street is such a quintessential rock epic that it ought to be added to the list of things they throw in for free on Desert Island Discs. Defying the old adage that all double albums would be vastly improved by being boiled down into a single one, Exile is such an astounding feast of blues, gospel, boogie, country and flat-out rock that it feels as if it ought to have been a triple album instead. And guess what - now it is, thanks to Polydor's new reissue which arrives with an extra disc of Exile-related material mysteriously lifted from the vaults 38 years Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Listening to Woodpigeon’s nuanced indie-folk, I looked around at the 300 or so strong crowd who had also chosen to spend the evening away from Peter Snow and his Swingometer. Some had their eyes closed, others were gently nodding, but mainly they were just smiling. And right then I’m sure they were thinking, as was I, that listening to these luxuriant Canadian harmonies was possibly the best way you could spend election night.Woodpigeon has become known for a sort of lush pastoral sound that sits somewhere between Belle and Sebastian and Sufjan Stevens. And if the latter were the main parties Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's probably a bit early to start picking the best albums of 2010, but I would seriously consider a legal challenge if Diane Birch's Bible Belt isn't there or thereabouts when the votes are counted. Like a long-lost singer-songwriter classic, it accomplishes the trick of sounding instantly familiar, yet Birch herself doesn't sound quite like any other artist you've heard before. Her voice can be soft and supple, but it also has a raw, rasping quality that can saw through a song like "Choo Choo", with its vamping organ and garage-band guitars. By contrast, in the hymn-like "Forgiveness" she Read more ...
colin.mckean
Sir Mick Jagger was not, by any means, a street fightin’ man, but his charisma and the conviction with which he sang the line, allowed us to suspend our disbelief. The song would have seemed ludicrous, pathetic even, if it had not. Iggy Pop is not, in fact, a street walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm, but when he sang the immortal opening line of “Search and Destroy” last night, he embodied every word.All Tomorrow’s Parties were celebrating five years of their Don’t Look Back events with a double bill at the Hammersmith Apollo, and had invited Iggy and the Stooges to play Raw Power Read more ...
theartsdesk
This month's most intriguing and fabulous CDs are headed up by the strange and beautiful electronica of Scuba and a magnum opus from Natalie Merchant. Highlights include music from the offspring of the famous from Jakob Dylan and Harper Simon, maverick country from Willie Nelson and superior offerings from David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, "hearfelt and hopping mad" music from John Grant, gypsy punk from Gogol Bordello, ethereal jazz from Food and a brace from South Africa. Stinker of the Month is the latest from the overrated Paul Weller. theartsdesk's reviewers are Robert Sandall, Joe Muggs, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This new series proposes to examine the individual roles played by the members of successful rock groups, but you could tell there was trouble in store from the narrator's opening question: "What is the DNA of a great rock'n'roll band?" Like the rest of this first programme, which tried to draw up a job description for lead singers, the question didn't quite make sense. Shouldn't it have been "What is in the DNA"? And were we about to see a Horizon-style scientific analysis of chromasomes and double-helix molecules, or did it just mean: "What kind of people join rock'n'roll bands?"It turned Read more ...
bruce.dessau
It's not the bobbies on the beat that are getting younger, it's the bands. Bombay Bicycle Club formed while at school in north London's Crouch End and were already making a name for themselves when they left full-time education in 2008. Rock and roll domination is on the curriculum instead, thanks to the success of last year's debut album, I Had the Blues but I Shook Them Loose.Their critical acclaim, being voted Best New Band at the NME Awards earlier this year, for instance, is not entirely a bolt from the blue. Particularly for anyone who believes that talent is genetic. Guitarist Jamie Read more ...
Tim Cumming
A great wall of noise greets the audience as it settles in to the Royal Festival Hall - the sound of some heavy outer planet’s radio frequency, a subtly oscillating drone that recalls NASA’s recordings of radio emissions from Saturn made by the Cassini spacecraft. Lou Reed’s work station for the night is set centre-stage, behind a rack of electronic machinery, a row of guitars awaiting their signal stacked behind him, but for 20 minutes or so there’s just that continuum of noise – in fact the sound of three guitars leant up against a stack of live amps. Is this to soften up the audience’s Read more ...
Russ Coffey
To call Laura Marling folk rock’s Sylvia Plath for the Pete Doherty generation probably sounds like faint praise. But ever since I heard her described thus I haven’t been able to lose the Plath comparison. Fragile, sensitive, effortlessly talented; Marling’s all these things. But more, she’s a poet of feeling too much and caring too deeply, able to perfectly crystallise such emotions because she always seems to be living them. Capable of finding wonder in a wet weekend, or tragedy in a sunny afternoon because she never quite belongs. With the new album I Speak Because I Can, Read more ...
joe.muggs
Welcome to the grown-up rock mothership. I've seen bands play in TV studios plenty of times over the years, but walking into the Later... With Jools Holland recording at BBC Television Centre for the first time, as I did last night, is something else. Studios generally have a disappointing feeling of smallness, or of looking behind the curtain to reveal artifice, but this genuinely was like stepping into the TV screen: the circle of bands and punters exactly as you see it when the camera spins around in the show's intro.For full disclosure, I should say here that I have never been a fan of Read more ...
joe.muggs
The protests around the Iranian presidential elections of 2009 brought home to many in the West not only how dominated by youth the pro-democracy movement in Iran is, but also how westernised the youth of that country are. Symbolised by Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death at the hands of security forces was caught on camera and beamed around the world, this was an Iran a world away from the glowering Ayatollahs and pepperpot women in black chadors we tended to see on news reports.No One Knows About Persian Cats is a timely reminder of the existence of this young, modern Iran Read more ...