singer-songwriters
Album: John Grant - The Art of the LieWednesday, 12 June 2024
“I feel ashamed because I couldn’t become the man that you always hoped I’d become.” The line is repeated during “Father,” The Art of the Lie’s third track. After this, there’s “Mother and Son,” “Daddy” and the allusive “The Child Catcher”. Parent-... Read more... |
Album: Marina Allen - Eight Pointed StarSaturday, 01 June 2024
While some tracks on Marina Allen’s third album are country accented and a pedal steel is used a few times, it’s impossible to categorise Eight Pointed Star as Americana. Its sixth track, “Easy”, has the closeted atmosphere of The Velvet Underground... Read more... |
Beth Gibbons, Salle Pleyel, Paris review - a triumph of intimacyThursday, 30 May 2024
Beth Gibbons, once the voice of Portishead, and later a wonderful solo singer and songwriter, hasn’t been on stage for a long while. She makes the most of a paradoxical yet magical mix of being at once fleeting and totally present.Something of Miles... Read more... |
Album: Isobel Campbell - Bow to LoveThursday, 23 May 2024
Isobel Campbell has maintained a consistent career on the fringes of popular music for three decades. She's made a home in the area where indie, folk, rock and BBC 6Music merge. Aside from her 1990s involvement with Belle and Sebastian, she’s best-... Read more... |
The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - a dip into day one and the elephant-in-the-roomFriday, 17 May 2024
Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like the trash compactor in the first Star Wars film.THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM BITThere is a boycott, by... Read more... |
Album: Jack Savoretti - Miss ItaliaThursday, 16 May 2024
It’s a long way to the middle. Jack Savoretti has worked hard to get there. He’s grafted. His first album, 2007’s Between the Minds, hinted that his musical DNA bestrode early-Seventies Los Angeles, those Topanga Canyon strummers and such, but... Read more... |
Album: Beth Gibbons - Lives OutgrownMonday, 13 May 2024
It’s been a long while since Beth Gibbons released an album. Portishead’s Third was out in 2008. She has lived through so many changes since, and, even though her signature is still very much in glorious evidence, Lives Outgrown represents a... Read more... |
Album: Josienne Clarke - Parenthesis, IMonday, 06 May 2024
Parentheses, I is an album title – (I) – that’s a hieroglyph of the self, the brackets like shields facing opposite ways; and as an artist and performer, Josienne Clarke knows how to use a shield, and how to use a sword, too.In her albums... Read more... |
Mitski, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - cool and quirky, yet deeply personalWednesday, 01 May 2024
It was her 2018 album Be the Cowboy which saw Mitski propelled to stardom status. Laurel Hell, which followed in 2022, saw her continue on the popstar trajectory with synth-heavy songs, so the more laid back folkiness of last year’s release, The... Read more... |
10 Questions for folk singer-songwriter Olivia Chaney - 'deeply personal songs that open out to the universal'Monday, 25 March 2024
The British folk artist and singer songwriter Olivia Chaney released her third solo album this week, as we break out into springtime, and she’ll be touring sporadically around the UK over the next few months, with a showcase at London’s Union Chapel... Read more... |
Album: Sarah Jane Morris - The SisterhoodSaturday, 09 March 2024
Released yesterday to coincide with International Women’s Day, The Sisterhood will surely prove to be one of the brightest jewels in Sarah Jane Morris’s varicoloured discography.A labour of love which Morris has been contemplating for two decades,... Read more... |
Album: Norah Jones - VisionsWednesday, 06 March 2024
Here’s a question: do singer-songwriters produce their strongest songs in times of upheaval, as they seek to express a feeling of “this stuff is hard”? Or do more powerful creations emerge once the anguish has been overcome?Norah Jones’s Pick Me Up... Read more... |
