New music
Kieron Tyler
Brian James’ opening cut is “The Twist”. Not the Sixties dance-craze song, but a melodic guitar-driven rocker simpatico with what Australian bands The Hoodoo Gurus, The New Christs and The Screaming Tribesman were dealing in during the late 1980s. Detroit’s slash-and-burn is in there, as is a pop sensibility. “Slow it Down”, Side Ones third cut, sounds like an alternate-universe hit single: one where edgy pop-rock ruled. Side Two opens with “Ain't That a Shame”, a mid-tempo, moody outing with the feel of the Johnny Thunders of “Subway Train” and “It’s Not Enough”.Back in the Britain of 1990 Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s a crisis in popular musical vocals. They’ve reached a very naff stasis. After a decade-and-a-half of Cowell hegemony and stars that have risen during the same period, a generation thinks there are only two ways to express emotion. One is melismatic singing (for women – wandering wildly about the higher registers on every syllable, a la Mariah Carey/Whitney Houston), the other is voice-breaking (for men - cracking into a vulnerable falsetto a la Jeff Buckley/Coldplay). It’s all very boring. There are so, so many other ways to express emotion. Just ask Louis Armstrong, Ian Dury, Read more ...
mark.kidel
Paradox is a strange stoner Western directed by Neil Young’s partner Daryl Hannah. You can see it on Netflix. The soundtrack is by Neil Young and his now regular band, Promise of the Real, which includes two of Willie Nelson's sons, Micah and Lukas. Members of the band and Young play themselves in the film, or at least play roles that seem inspired by their fantasies of themselves as figures of the old Wild West. The film is a mess, and sometimes feels like little more than a string of fanciful promos. The soundtrack is perhaps most interesting as a manifestation of the way in which rock Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Stones do it. U2 too. It takes immense and lordly clout for a touring band to breeze into town and each night summon a major recording artist to step onstage for some party fun. For Arcade Fire’s first night at Wembley Arena it was Chrissie Hynde. For the second, Jarvis Cocker lolloped up in a cream twin-breast linen suit to deliver that radio-friendly anthem, “Cunts Are Still Running the World”. Plus ça change, as they say in Montreal.From “Everything Now” to “Wake Up”, this was a sensational spectacle. Arcade Fire have taken the concept of performing in the round and, with the aid of an Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Jeremy Cunningham (b.1965) is bass player and a founding member of The Levellers, as well as being a visual artist in his own right. During the 1990s The Levellers, and most especially their 1991 album Levelling the Land, became a phenomenon. The group were punk-influenced folk-rockers whose songs were often polemic and political. It was no coincidence that their main flush of popularity was during the premiership of John Major. They became a focus for anti-government feeling, especially among those affiliated with the travelling and festival communities (remember Major’s “New age travellers Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Over the years the Manics have travelled a varied and adventurous musical path with styles ranging from punk to disco-rock. One thing has remained constant: their intense sense of righteousness. Until now. Resistance is Futile finds the band in a more relaxed mood. And curiously, it suits them rather well. The subtext of the album is the fading of the anger of youth. The tone is established on the first track, "People Give In", a kind of blend of Nick Cave's "People Ain't No Good" and Leiber/Stoller's "Is that all there is?". The sweeping chorus - "there is no theory Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The National Jazz Trio of Scotland are not really that at all. With a name designed to sound like a stiffly formal unit they are, in fact, an entity based around Bill Wells, a Scottish institution, albeit an alternative one. He’s been around the block many times since the Eighties when he first started making waves with his very personally curated and individual perspective on jazz. Since those days, he’s worked with all sorts, ranging from Isobel Campbell to Aidan Moffat to Future Pilot AKA. His fourth National Jazz Trio of Scotland outing is a likeable, laid back odd-pop curiosity.Vol. IV Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Joan Wasser – aka Joan as Police Woman – is known as a sophisticated songwriter and a pretty groovy person. But most of all it’s her gorgeously warm voice that's earned her a cult following. Over seven albums her angst-ridden vocals have explored heartache and compulsion with a blend of soul and indie-rock. Damned Devotion, her latest LP, has been particularly well received, earning mainly four-star reviews. Her UK tour starts next week in Glasgow.Wasser was not always a singer. She started off her musical career playing violin in various youth orchestras, and later with the Boston University Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two minutes into The Lookout, a couple of related parallels bubble up when the David Crosby of If I Could Only Remember my Name and Gene Clark at his most sparse spring to mind. It’s not that the album’s opening cut “Margaret Sands” sounds like either but that the creative outlook is similar: a country-ish singer-songwriter setting their composition in a baroque musical frame.The rest of The Lookout is similarly conscious of how the form of delivery can shape a song. Yet such suggestions of lineage – an awareness of the classic – soon vanish. Ultimately and satisfyingly, Laura Veirs’s 10th Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fairytales is lovely. It opens with a subtle version of Jimmy Webb’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” which merges Radka Toneff’s emotive and intimate vocal with Steve Dobrogosz’s sparse piano lines. The ingredients are minimal, there is no embellishment yet the performance is powerful.Over the following nine songs, the mood endures. Versions of Elton John’s “Come Down in Time”, Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the Stars”, “My Funny Valentine” and “Nature Boy” sit naturally alongside musical interpretations of Emily Dickinson’s “I Read my Sentence” and the Fran Landesman poems “Before Love Went Out of Read more ...
howard.male
This New York band’s first album for a decade is as good as anything else they’ve done, but what were they thinking with the track order? Things get off to an agreeable bouncy Blondie-esque start with first single “Pirates”. But after that there are several decidedly plodding, generic tracks before the party really gets started. Perhaps they have succumbed to the long-held received wisdom that only a dull four-to-the-floor beat will seduce the masses. But it’s always been their knack for combining novel polyrhythms with unusual chord progressions that’s made them one of my favourite 21st Read more ...
joe.muggs
Oh this is annoying. One really doesn't want to be mean about the People's Princess. Kylie is one of the great pop stars of our time: charming, witty, a survivor, with several dozen proper classic songs under her belt, she has never stopped sparking with star quality. And the way she talks about her creative process, it's clear she still cares, so it's very easy to believe that she still has an album in her that can stand with her best and cement her status as one of the best to do it.This isn't it, though. This is a country album, recorded in Nashville. Not that that's anything bad in itself Read more ...