New music
Guy Oddy
Richard Hawley’s eighth solo album, Further is, like so many of his previous discs, a masterclass in good taste and relaxed easy listening vibes – but it’s one which manages to steer well clear of the middle of the road. In fact, there’s much here that is reminiscent of that other cool Northerner in a suit, Barry Adamson, who spent a fair few albums wrestling the Easy Listening genre from the '70s cardigan-wearing hell of Val Doonican and his pals. For much of Further, Hawley is on a similar track with a groove that suggests Roy Orbison fronting Phil Spector’s famous Wall of Sound.Further Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Debates about whether 1964’s Marnie presaged Alfred Hitchcock’s downslide as a force will run and run. It is however certain that it was the director’s last film scored by Bernard Herrmann, who had worked on 1963’s The Birds, 1960’s Psycho, 1959’s North by Northwest and, before that, a run of Hitchcock’s films back to 1955. After Marnie, the affiliation continued – for a while. Herrmann’s music was heard in the TV show the Alfred Hitchcock Hour and he provided a score for Torn Curtain which the director neither liked or used. The professional relationship was over.Although the music for Read more ...
mark.kidel
Yousou N’Dour has come a long way from his cassettes with Super Etoile de Dakar, that wild mbalax energy, fed by the clatter of the high-pitched sabar drums, with vocals that soared and fizzed with emotion and soul. Today’s Youssou is air-brushed and smooth, world music for global tastes, with a slickness that almost - but not quite – submerges the unique quality of the heart-stirring voice that made him famous.Salif Keita, that other super-charged West African voice, led the way back in the late 80s, with rock-flavoured productions by Ibrahim Sylla. As with Youssou’s more recent Read more ...
Owen Richards
Blessed with a red sunset and an adoring crowd, Noel Gallagher brought life to the ruins of Cardiff Castle. With support from fellow 90s alumnus Gaz Coombes, and Wales’s next-gen prodigies Boy Azooga and Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, the evening provided a winning mini-festival affair.From first striding onto the stage, there was no denying that Gallagher is at home on stages this size. He possessed a knowing confidence as he broke into recent rock-pop single “Holy Mountain”, throwing cheeky shapes at opportune moments and always half a minute away from pointing a finger toward the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
They’re back and they’re looking and sounding good – and Spice Girls mania took over Dublin’s city centre for several hours before their concert yesterday. Hotels were booked out, every other woman I passed in the street was wearing a Spice Girls T-shirt or hat, and by mid-afternoon the whole city appeared to be moving as one towards Croke Park. Yet despite the fans’ enthusiasm, there’s always a worry that recreating a brand – as the Spice Girls became – from their mid-1990s heyday may make them seem dated or an irrelevance to a generation well versed in feminism and their own versions Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Was it imagination or did The Waterboys’ audience at London’s Roundhouse, invited to sing along to “The Nearest Thing to Hip”, really sing extra-loud and lustily on the line “in this shithole”? On a momentous day that seemed to push Britain further toward the perilous unknown, Mike Scott’s energetic performance of the song from the band’s 2015 album Modern Blues certainly struck a chord, and his recollections of youthful visits to London and lament of now long-gone delights surely resonated with many.There was the record store in Westbourne Grove where the teenaged Scott was invariably told Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Soundwalk Collective is a multi-disciplinary audio-visual collective founded by Stephan Crasneanscki, a musical psycho-geographer and field recorder, the source material of his works drawn from specific locations: in the case of The Peyote Dance, it's the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico, also known as "Copper Canyon", and as spectacular a wilderness as you can imagine.Here, the French Surrealist poet Antonin Artaud came in 1936 on horseback, in search of peyote, a shaman and a cure to opioid addiction. His subsequent encounters with the ceremonies of the Rarámuri Indians and the peyote shamans of Read more ...
Owen Richards
Oh Sees have long been touted of as the perfect festival band. Their racuous, high-tempo rock'n'roll always riles up the drunken swathes, even if no-one recognises the song. However, going to a headline show is a different prospect - these swathes are the loyalists, not ready to accept anything less than carnage. After witnessing a relentless sold out show in Cardiff, maybe it's time to remove "festival" from that opening statement.Oh Sees have appeared under many guises, but their most recent form is pounding prog beast. Two drummers sat centre stage, orbited by guitar, bass and keys. Rhythm Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Rokia Traoré’s passage through this year’s Brighton Festival has been central, binding it to her Malian identity in a series of gigs. This hands-on Guest Director’s pulsing Afro-rock Opening Night was followed by the first Dream Mandé show’s recasting of traditional sounds. A Malian Dance Night added FGM protest, Seventies s.f.-soundtracked myth and cheeky wit from young choreographers. But this show is surely Traoré’s cornerstone, supporting all the rest, as she takes on the role of griot to recast Mali as democracy’s secret rock.The griot’s role at the root of West African culture, orally Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Unfortunately, it’s now reached the point where it’s impossible to mention Morrissey without politics overshadowing music. His recent wearing of a For Britain Party lapel pin on US TV is only the latest in a catalogue of public stances that seem to indicate he’s a fan of the far right. His new album, an imaginative explosion of intriguing cover versions, including multiple collaborations, may be an attempt to move the conversation on but, for many, things have already gone too far.From mid-Seventies Bowie to 21st century John Lydon, Morrissey’s home of Los Angeles can do strange things to Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Prufrock might have measured his life in coffee spoons but for many of us it’s rock albums, the money to buy them way back when scrabbled together from Saturday jobs and student grants – remember them? Many in the audience at the Royal Albert Hall last night for Mark Knopfler surely did and we knew precisely where we were when we heard “Sultans of Swing”, which caught the ear on late-night student radio – that open-tuning National Steel guitar, the story of George, “who knows all the chords”, delivered in a voice and style that seemed to mix Bob Dylan and Lou Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
At its best, the music of Glasgow band Honeyblood often sounded like a girl gang you weren’t cool enough to be a part of - making the news that singer-guitarist Stina Tweeddale had split with drummer Cat Myers and recast the name as that of a solo project an intriguing prospect. The Honeyblood of In Plain Sight is no less raucous than that of the previous two albums under the name, with a cast of skilled - if anonymous - musicians and US indie super-producer John Congleton on hand to deliver Tweeddale’s garage rock visions. If the result is a little more focused, a little less charming - well Read more ...