New music
Kieron Tyler
Memória das Águas hasn’t figured in lists of great Brazilian albums. Its creator Fernando Falcão isn’t as celebrated as fellow countryman and musical maverick Tom Zé. The reissue of this arresting yet previously obscure album should help change these oversights.Although it was recorded in Paris in 1979, Memória das Águas came out in Brazil two years later on Poitou, a label which may have issued only one other record – a live album by a band called Synco Jazz. Falcão’s album was released to coincide with two shows he played at a São Paulo art gallery in April 1981. It was his first time Read more ...
Liz Thomson
On the face of it, the idea of “an East Anglian Americana collective” is a little weird, but then East Anglia’s an area that’s historically been host to a lot of Yanks and it was from one of the USAF bases that the late great Paul Oliver, the British polymath who chronicled the blues in so many ground-breaking books, first heard the sounds of authentic Americana. The flatlands there may not "shine like a National guitar", but hey...So here we are, a high-energy eponymous debut album from Morganway, a six-piece that’s been championed by Bob Harris and which began a festival tour last month Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The well-spring of certain musical genres and hometowns of certain influential musicians have long been a source of civic pride – and a boost to the tourist industry – in many clued-in parts of the world. One only has to think of the co-opting of Bob Marley’s life and influence in attracting tourist dollars to Jamaica or the raising of the Beatles to mythic status – bus tours and all – in Liverpool. Birmingham, arguably the birthplace of heavy metal through the music of the magnificent Black Sabbath, however, has been slow to give appropriate due to its own sons and rock’n’roll heroes. For, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
If you are between 13 and 17 years old, Mabel is pop royalty because she’s maintained a playlist/daytime radio presence for the last two years, culminating in her over-my-ex smash “Don’t Call Me Up” at the start of this year. With six Top 20 hits under her belt, two Brit Award nominations and a billion streams, she’s doing well. If you’re upwards of 35, Mabel is pop royalty because her mother is singer Neneh Cherry, her father is trip hop producer Cameron McVey, and her grandfather is jazz trumpet pioneer Don Cherry. If you’re in the former category, her debut album may satisfy. If you’re in Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There is a video, part of Greenpeace’s laudable Save The Arctic Campaign, in which Ludovico Einaudi sits at a Steinway atop a small ice flow performing his Elegy for the Arctic. As he plays a descending scale, the camera pans slightly to the right just in time to see a chunk of glacier break away and crash into the sea. Perfect timing! The pianist-composer presumably needed to quickly warm up his hands after his performance, which was observed by a seal, and it would be interesting to know what treatment the piano required – humidity is the everyday enemy of pianos but they do not take kindly Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This was a year of superb musical standards, smooth organisation and a real sense of celebration. In the last couple of years, WOMAD being more liberal and internationalist than nearly anywhere else, there was a sense in the air of a collective political shock - maybe the future wasn’t with our tribe of happy cultural globalists after all. This year, even with the new PM, there was a more defiant sense that the WOMAD spirit will prevail after the current nationalist neurosis blows off some steam. For WOMAD is not just about music - the considerable presence of Extinction Rebellion confirmed Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In metal circles, Volbeat are a phenomenon. For almost 20 years the Danish rockers have been filling venues with their iconic combination of bulldozer riffs and hip-shaking Elvis swagger. It's the tension between these two contrasting influences that underpins their success. Or, at least, so far. Now, the recipe has changed: the tension has gone. The flavours have merged. It all sounds a lot softer. Fans won't be altogether surprised. Songwriter Michael Poulsen's music has been getting progressively lighter for years. What really strikes you is how mainstream it now feels. Other than the Read more ...
Owen Richards
Rock ‘n’ roll. That’s what was promised. It was emblazoned on the organ for all to see. And if that visual guarantee was too subtle, the set began with “Rock 'n’ Roll Star”. Only, despite the swagger, Liam Gallagher doesn’t really live up to the promise live. It’s loud enough, and the songs talk the talk, but this balmy night in Malta appeared to be just another day in the office for the former Oasis frontman.That’s not to say the evening wasn’t enjoyable. In fact, for anyone half-interested in music during the 90s, it’s nearly impossible not to grin ear to ear during the opening strains of “ Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“I’m talking about these songs in more depth than I usually do, revealing a few secrets along the way,” says a black–jeaned, cowboy-booted Lucinda Williams after singing “Right in Time”, the achingly erotic first song on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, her breakthrough, Grammy-winning, never-bettered album of 1998. She’s on a year-long, sell-out tour celebrating the record’s 20th anniversary, in which she performs the album in full, plus a few other numbers.Playing full-album gigs has become quite a trend, but this has an added dimension. The set is a kind of memoir, complete with old home Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
As a recent exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland showed, attempting to tell the history of Scottish popular music in an afternoon – or on one single album – is no mean feat. Though Karine Polwart’s Scottish Songbook covers project spans time and genre, from Big Country to Biffy Clyro, her choices are thematically linked by what they say about Scotland both now and in the past, and made into a coherent whole thanks to the folk musician’s skill for taking ownership of the traditional.The out-of-context cover has long been a staple of rock shows (and Radio 1’s Live Lounge), but Polwart’ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Britain’s musical eruption of 1977 wasn’t just about the now. As the new box set 1977 – The Year Punk Broke amply demonstrates, the flux allowed more than first-timers through the door. Seasoned gig-circuit regulars Stranglers got a leg up. A band called The Rings, featuring former Pink Fairies, Pretty Things and Tomorrow member Twink, issued their one single in 1977. Andy Ellison, Radio Stars’ singer, had a similar pedigree – in the Sixties, he had been in John’s Children, alongside a short-stay Marc Bolan. Radio Stars bassist had been in Sparks, and most of the band were in Seventies almost Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s not every artist who performs “living funerals” along the way as she tours. Then again, American singer Emily Cross is far from the average rocker. Cross Record was previously Cross and her husband Dan Duszynski, who were also both in the slowcore indie “supergroup” Loma. However, this third Cross Record album was made solo, after a move to Mexico following her divorce, also alongside newfound sobriety. It is a more direct, thoughtful creature than its predecessors, yet musically even more floaty and spectral.The default setting for the album is hazy tone music speckled with twinkling Read more ...