New music
Barney Harsent
2017 was a year in which Paul Weller reminded us all why he’s a force to be reckoned with. An impressive foray into the world of soundtracks (the score to Johnny Harris’s Jawbone) was followed by A Kind Revolution, which was, for the most part, a very impressive collection. This year sees yet another album from an artist who is clearly mining a rich seam of form. True Meanings is a surprising album. Let’s get one thing out of the way at the start: it’s very, very good – that’s not the surprise. Given his recent run, you’d expect this to be the case. No, the surprise is in the timbre Read more ...
mark.kidel
For nearly half a century, Loudon Wainwright III has trodden a path on the margins of American popular music. He is as much a wry and sometimes puerile humourist as he is the writer of touching songs about love. This new collection of unreleased material provides both an entry point for those unfamiliar with his work and a treasure trove for devotees.There is material recorded in the studio, on his laptop and at concerts – even a bootleg from a fan. The two CDs come with a nicely designed booklet with mementoes and drawings, all of which testify to the child-like qualities that provide Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Matt Johnson is a genial bloke with a trunk-load of songs that view the glass as not only half empty but too small. In the '80s and early '90s this pessimistic protest singer even managed to bother the charts a fair few times before quietly slipping out of sight until the release, a year or so ago, of his experimental Radio Cineola Trilogy album. However, the resurrection of The The didn’t end there and on an autumnal, but thankfully dry, evening in Birmingham, he took a crowd of 40- and 50-somethings on a trip back to the days when indie kids read the newspapers but didn’t get up and shake a Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Rivers carry our effluents away; they water the land, burst their banks, serve as borders, and as freight routes; their names are older than the towns built around them. They carry spirits and take lives, bring fecundity, and carry themselves inexorably to the sea. As such they are the perfect metaphor for Richard Thompson’s songcraft, and the river of song that makes up his latest set, titled 13 Rivers, is powerful if challenging, a self-produced album recorded in analog conditions over 10 days with his regular band of drummer Michael Jerome, bassist Taras Prodaniuk and guitarist Bobby Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The terrace beside the restaurant in Cologne’s Stadtgarten – the city park – is heaving. Agreeably so. A bar and a food counter facing onto it are fringed by rows of long tables. Overhanging trees unite in a canopy suggesting this might be forest clearing. And despite the amount of people of all ages and despite the amount of the local Kölsch beer and the Riesling you’d expect in Rhine-straddling city flying around, the atmosphere is relaxed.On the terrace’s bandstand, Tigger-ish Berlin band Champyons bounce through a mix of electro-inclined pop and guitar-focused songs suggesting a punked-up Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Until now, hearing the extraordinary “Ratidzo” was all-but impossible. The original single is rare and has not been reissued before. It begins with a plaintive whistle which sets the scene for a hypnotic and beautiful rotating pattern of single notes possibly played on a gamelan-style instrument. Rhythmic accompaniment comes from a form of shaker. It is not instantly possible to place where this music is from. Eastern Asia? Hawaii? The next track is similarly mysterious, but the addition of a vocal suggests Africa. The singular talent responsible for these outstanding performances is Zimbabwe Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Of all the great country superstars of his era, Willie Nelson is truly the last man standing (as was made clear by the title of his last album… Last Man Standing). In his mid-80s his output has, if anything, become more prolific. However, if his 1970s outlaw persona could peek into the future and see what 2018 Willie was up to, he might be surprised. His latest album, a tribute to his old pal Frank Sinatra, has wandered far off into the world of late night jazz bar shuffling.In truth, Nelson has form in this area. A couple of years ago he released a set of George Gershwin standards – and even Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When he was asked about the first Orbital album since 2012’s Wonky, Paul Hartnoll said that he was torn between writing a really aggressive, Crass-type album and going back to the rave sensibilities of the early 1990s. Monsters Exist may well have some of the former, especially in the atmospheric “The Raid”, but it’s still largely a disc of hands in the air, trancey techno. However, at times like this, a bit of coming together with big smiles is as good a way as any to stand up to those who would divide and impose their obnoxious ideas on us all.Recent single “PHUK” is bouncy rave tune that Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Ambient sounds from an imaginary rail concourse fade to a full choir in the 42 seconds of “Opening Station”, the sonic scene-setting for Macca’s new hour-long set, his first album of new songs since 2013’s New. From here, Egypt Station properly leads off down the tracks with attractive piano ballad “I Don’t Know”, a sort of a slowed-up, cut-in-half adaptation of the “Lady Madonna” riff, McCartney’s voice unadorned, naked, and somewhat troubled, asking “where am I going wrong?”, his angst leavened by an assertion of love. The excellent single, “Come on to Me”, is crunchier, with solid drums Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Back in 2014, Kandace Springs was the upcoming star of modern soul, mentored by Prince: she closed his 30th anniversary Purple Rain concert. Then, with her first album Soul Eyes, she was heralded as an important jazz vocalist. The release talks of Indigo as “marrying all the different things”. It’s what the rest of us call a mishmash.These songs are an eclectic assortment of covers, alongside a handful of originals composed with her long-standing production team Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken. There’s no doubting the potential of her vocal talent. Her timbre is warm, her phrasing and Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Hot on the heels of her celebrated 2017 album Out in the Storm, Katie Crutchfield shares an EP of a very different nature. The Waxahatchee sound is stripped down to its most bare and essential; much of Great Thunder is simply Crutchfield sat at a piano. It’s a clear departure from the noisy thrill of her last record, yet equally radiant and emotive.The six songs on Great Thunder were written with the now-dormant experimental recording group of the same name, between 2012 and 2014, while Crutchfield was also writing the Waxahatchee albums Cerulean Salt and Ivy Tripp. Though the original Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1969, a stream of creative new albums pointed to how what had grown from pop music could be reframed. Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline embraced country music. The Band’s eponymous second album drew on and was integral to defining Americana. The first album by Crosby, Stills & Nash shied away from the increasingly harsh template embraced by rock.In contrast, and bridging the Atlantic, little was more harsh than the debut albums by The Stooges and Led Zeppelin. The year's boundary pushers were seemingly endless: Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad, Can’s Monster Movie, Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group Read more ...