New music
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Pumarosa picked the perfect time of year to launch their second album into the world: its skittish drums, claustrophobic melodies and haunted vocals are the perfect soundtrack to witching season. But the horrors that inspired Devastation are far more personal: frontwoman Isabel Muñoz-Newsome was diagnosed with cervical cancer the week the band’s 2017 debut was released, with the band playing Glastonbury mere weeks after her surgery.With that back story in mind, you’d be forgiven for thinking tracks like “Fall Apart”, “Lose Control” and “Devastation” are primed to tell a particular story - but Read more ...
Nick Hasted
After the bleakness in the parts of Skeleton Tree touched directly by his son Arthur’s death, and the desolate grief of the accompanying documentary One More Time with Feeling, this is Nick Cave’s statement of faith. Ghosteen is unlike any record he’s made before, often sung in a desperate, reckless, heedless, loving voice unheard till now. If his heart has had to be torn open to reveal its varieties of vulnerability – the bereft croon and shaking falsetto on “Spinning Song”, the absolutely lovelorn, unabashed full-heartedness of “Bright Horses” – they remain remarkable sounds. The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A fiddle projects upwards from between Erlend Apneseth’s knees. Seated, he holds another in his right hand facing-off the instruments against each other. He’s plucking both, the pizzicato pitter-patter suggesting water drops on a bell or a koto. On the other side of the stage, guitarist Stephan Meidell is looping the sound, treating it to form a wash akin to that of a waterfall. In between, percussionist Øyvind Hegg-Lunde is behind a drum kit rattling and scraping what looks like a cheese grater attached to some allen keys.The moment passes and the Erlend Apneseth Trio settle back into the Read more ...
mark.kidel
BaBa ZuLa only fully manifest their free spirit when they play live, and in the intimate setting of a venue like the Jazz Cafe, where the entre audience is close to the stage. The Istanbul purveyors of "Turkish Psych" began their set by infiltrating the expectant crowd, Two of the band ambled through the excited throng, summoning energy as they went, and introducing the sounds of the electric saz and the large davul, the deep-sounding drum favoured by gypsy bands throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkans.A few minutes later, having processed across the floor, as in a shamanic ritual, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Three years after its release, Gene Clark explained where he was heading while creating 1974's No Other. “I was strongly influenced at that time by two other artists. Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions and [The Rolling Stones’s] Goat’s Head Soup. When I was writing No Other I concentrated on those albums a lot, and was very inspired by the direction of them...which is ironic, because Innervisions is a very climbing, spiritual thing, while Goat’s Head Soup has connotations of the lower forces as well. But somehow the joining of the two gave me a place to go with No Other, and I wanted it to go in a Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Tahliah Barnett has been having a rough old time of it. There was that doomed celebrity romance (Robert Pattinson) and some health issues (I’m not entirely sure if we need to know about her operation to have fibroids removed) but suffering, as we are all aware, is the fuel of creativity. Unclassifiable but leaning towards the classical, fka twigs’ gut-wrenching, soul-bearing second album – her first since the Mercury Prize nominated LP1 – showcases her soprano vocals against bare, eerie arrangements which will without doubt never be played in a club. Upbeat this is not; but Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Rochdale boasts quite a number of star turns but those that spring readily to mind are William Walton, Andy Kershaw, Barb Jungr, Gracie Fields and Lisa Stansfield. And here’s a good pub quiz question: what, apart from Rochdale, links Gracie and Lisa? It’s their shared surname! Gracie dropped the first four letters and rearranged the remaining five. Lisa, who was born up the road in Manchester, kept it.It’s 30 years this year since Stansfield made her solo debut with Affection, which delivered several hit singles and which, with sales of five million, is the biggest of the eight albums she’s Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Land of Kush are an ambitious 20-piece plus ensemble which features all manner of instruments from strings, horns, piano, guitar, santur, darbouka, oud and synths, as well as multiple vocalists and percussionists. Led by Sam Shalabi of the trippy Dwarfs of East Agouza, as well as numerous other Arabic-leaning Montreal ensembles, they have been fusing jazzy sounds with modern classical music, Arabic Café and distinctly experimental grooves for over a decade. Sand Enigma, however, is the band’s first album since 2013’s hymn to Cairo, The Big Mango, and again has an experimental yet distinctly Read more ...
Nick Hasted
At once grandiose and down to earth, ELO belong to the Seventies moment which lovingly pastiched simple Fifties rock’n’roll, with added sweeping strings left over from their own early conceptual prog. Double-album Out of the Blue’s status as 1978’s 10-million-selling hit of the year saw them sturdily survive New Wave, thanks to Jeff Lynne’s single-writing knack matching any skinny tie-sporting rival.Lynne’s first loves of classic pop and production saw him mothball ELO in the Eighties (only for bassist Bev Bevan to gallingly tour as ELO Part II), and give an early digital gloss to his teenage Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Little Simz exits through the ladies. It's telling, since her set at EartH is the capstone to a tour that, by her own admission, has left her rinsed, broken friendships, torn her away from her family and led her to question her career. And yet, as she wends past the women in the queue that snakes down the corridor, who whoop and thank her for the show, she's obviously buzzing. And rightly so. From start to finish, the show drips energy. Opening with a growling roll of bassy thunder, she almost breaks the sound system when she bursts on set with Boss. Her entrance alone lends credence to Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Jeff Goldblum’s 2018 debut, Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - The Capitol Studios Sessions, was one of the great surprises of last autumn, its infectious, feel-good vibe and self-deprecating retro pastiche as engaging as a favourite Hollywood movie on a grey day. And live at the Cadogan Hall Goldblum was a treat, a real-life Mr Nice Guy who was just so good and so funny.I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This is a far more serious outing, by which I don’t mean dull and boring. Rather high-quality jazz that can stand tall and needs no apology. The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra – Goldblum Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Considered logically, releasing an album as heavy on guest features as Charli XCX’s newest should present particular logistical problems when it comes to recreating the tracks on tour. Charli’s approach is the opposite: no gimmicks or trickery, just minimalist techno hedonism powered by nothing but strobe lights and sheer charisma.Charli XCX is the full package: MC, singer and her own hype man; number one, to butcher the title of her 2017 mixtape, in a hall full of angels on hand to contribute additional vocals when needed. Latest album Charli, released just last month, is both a party record Read more ...