New music
Tim Cumming
I first saw Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker at the Green Note in Camden just as they released 2013's Fire and Fortune album. The room was packed and they were brilliant, their own songs mixed with traditional pieces and choice covers. What was striking was that their own songs didn’t pale, lyrically or melodically, beside the others. Something good was going on here, embodied by Clarke’s limpid voice of longing, refute, realisation, and melancholia, alongside Walker’s brilliance as a guitarist and arranger. Since then, they’ve signed to Rough Trade from which came 2016’s stellar set of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There were empty seats at Cadogan Hall on Thursday night which was a crying shame, for Beth Nielsen Chapman was in town and she played a wonderful set, full of warmth and charm and powerful singing, her voice always true and expressive. Chapman is one of those artists who seems completely at home on stage – casual, natural, down-to-earth, creating the intimate atmosphere of Nashville’s Bluebird Café. This was Beth unplugged, no gimmicks (unlike a disappointing Barbican gig some 15 years ago), accompanying herself mostly on guitar and occasionally on piano in a perfectly paced 90-minute set. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Manchester trio The Longcut’s latest album, their third, comes nearly a decade after their last one, but is rife with ideas and energy as if it's still riding the crest of their initial success. Their M.O. is twofold, either shoegaze-ish, jangle-tinted numbers with wispy indie vocals in a singing style not a million miles from Ian Brown of The Stone Roses, or mantric post-Krautrock jams that pulse with building energy. The cuts in the former style are not dramatically special but the ones in the latter tend to be vividly realised and truly dynamic.The best of Arrows boasts imaginative Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The last we heard of US duo Daphne & Celeste was 18 years ago, when they made their name with three hits, notably the nursery-rhyme playground chant bitch-offs “U.G.L.Y.” and “Ohh Stick You”. They famously performed under a hail of bottles at Reading Festival in 2000, then disappeared, going on to peripheral film-acting careers. Max Tundra, an alt-tronic artist who is released on vanguard labels such as Warp and Domino, now engineers a comeback for this millennial, tween-pop pairing. On paper, this is a great, original idea. Upon listening, it’s partly successful.Mostly gone is Daphne Read more ...
joe.muggs
The death of “world music” is a wonderfully reassuring thing. That is to say, with every year that passes, it becomes less and less possible for media and consumers to bracket together music from outside the US and Europe as a single thing, and easier and easier for us to understand specific talents and currents within global culture for what they are. Obviously the fact I need to even say this means there's a good way to go. But talents like Baloji, the Congolese-born, Belgian-raised singer-songwriter, are blasting away the simplistic distinctions.As this album kicks off, the cascading Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Jack White isn’t one to shy away from a challenge. Whether it’s launching a record player into space to play Carl Sagan’s “A Glorious Dawn”, or embarking on seemingly unlikely collaborations with Beyoncé or hip hop act A Tribe Called Quest, he seems to be a game sort. It’s this ambition (with a small "a" – for "artistic") that we see writ large over Boarding House Reach, his third solo LP and the first he’s released in four years.The result is a sprawling collection of songs, uneven to the point of seeming almost willfully inconsistent and, occasionally stunning. Boarding House Reach is Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The packed crowd at the Jazz Café was fired up by a sizzling samba soul band led by Kita Steuer on bass and vocals, singing along to a production line of hits, complete with dynamic brass section and superior percussion. All songs by a singular Brazilian artist, Tim Maia, who died 20 years ago and whose music was being celebrated.We do live in a tribute act world these days – what started with the Bootleg Beatles and at least 15 Abba tribute bands has become universal and spread to more cult artists. Upcoming just at the Jazz Café include evenings dedicated to Serge Gainsbourg, Gil Scott Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Three years ago The Vaccines’ last album, English Graffiti, received a mixed response. It appeared to be a stab at moving sideways from the previous two, at proving they were more than just a guitar band in the classic indie mould, that they could also be studio-produced into the realms of polished pop. It was an experiment they’re now, perhaps, less sure about. In any case, The Vaccines 2018 is a different band. Drummer Pete Robinson has left, to be replaced by Yoann Intonti of fellow London major-indie outfit Spector, and keyboard-player Tim Lanham has also joined. On Combat Sports this Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
This column last encountered Cocteau Twins in 2015 when the compilation The Pink Opaque and the Tiny Dynamine/Echoes in a Shallow Bay album, which collected two EPs, were reissued on vinyl only. Now, it’s the turn of two albums-as-such: 1983's Head Over Heels and 1984's Treasure.The overriding question from then still applies: neither record is rare in its original form and neither fetches a high price. The reissues sell for around £17. Decent-shape first pressings fetch £3 or £4 less than that. Why would anyone buy a vinyl reissue of either?And, upending a review’s normal structure, the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although its opening minute suggests one of Can’s Ethnological Forgery Series tracks, Jungle? Quelle Jungle? quickly sets its stall with gentle whacka-whacka guitar, a Cerrone-type or South African-styled female chorale, fusion-jazz woodwind, shimmering electric piano, Latin percussion, squelchy bass and a touch of Space’s space disco. There is a lot going on.Essentially, the album – its title a reference to Supertramp’s Crisis What Crisis – marries yacht rock and the smooth, Côte d'Azur side of disco. Fire Island, this is not. Instead, this could have packed the light-up dance-floor of Paris Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Oh dear. After a bumpy couple of years which included an all-too-public arrest for domestic violence to which he pleaded guilty, Don McLean is releasing his first new studio album in eight years. Metaphorically (and sometimes literally) it hits a lot of bum notes and often tips over into self-parody.For a singer-songwriter whose back catalogue includes such genuine classics as “Crying”, “And I Love You So”, “Winterwood” and of course “American Pie” (the manuscript for which recently went for $1.2 million at auction), and whose talent was (according to some) is hymned in the Charles Fox-Norman Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Full disclosure: I have never quite gotten over Alexandra Burke's rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. I'm not sure I ever will.And now I'm unsure as how to cope with the fresh outrage of realisation that it is now 10 years since that flagrant disregard of a soul-crushing classic, when clearly I haven't aged at all.A decade on, the X Factor winner celebrates by signing with Decca Records, capitalising on her recent stint on Strictly Come Dancing, and releasing an album of epic power ballad proportions.It's a strange mix of 90s femme-pop that I am accidentally crushing on and cheesy Read more ...