New music
Thomas H. Green
As the late Leonard Cohen once growled, “Everybody knows that the war is over/Everybody knows that the good guys lost.” That’s how 2016 felt. Perhaps the moment that encapsulated my year was standing in a very muddy Somerset field, two days after the Brexit disaster, part of an exhausted but defiant Sunday night crowd, singing along with LCD Soundsystem for all we were worth; “So it’s us versus them, over and over again.” That repeating chorus, circling and circling, summing it all up.In 2016 the scales tipped when we weren’t looking. The “good guys” suddenly became the minority. Meanwhile, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The big news as this year closes is that vinyl sales have brought more money in than downloads. They made £2.4 million compared to the £2.1 million from digital, the eighth consecutive year of growth in vinyl sales. Of course, to a large degree, this is because the youth market very suddenly transferred their affections from downloads to streaming. Which doesn’t make sense to me. If you can’t get a decent connection, you don’t have music. And that’s not even starting in on quality issues. But this isn’t the place for that, nor is it the place for cynics to sneer at vinyl as a home Read more ...
Barney Harsent
For those of you who aren’t parents, or a member of theartsdesk’s burgeoning under-5 readership, Mr Tumble is the comic creation of Justin Fletcher a children’s entertainer and TV presenter. Among his CV highlights is providing the voice of Jake, one of the the Noughties, pre-school phenomenon the Tweenies, and a character who made Joe Pasquale sound like Richard Burton after a packet of woodbines and half a bottle of decent Scotch.I’m not joking, compared to that voice, nails down a blackboard seems like a decent option for guided meditation, so I’m genuinely terrified going into this. I’m Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Another day, another country Christmas album. Yesterday, on theartsdesk, Kacey Musgraves’s A Very Kacey Christmas was given the once-over. Today, it’s the more storied, more venerable Loretta Lynn and White Christmas Blue, her second-ever Christmas album and the belated sequel to 1966’s Country Christmas. Fifty years ago, that album opened with its self-penned title track. In 2016, a remake becomes the second song on the new White Christmas Blue.“Away in a Manger” was on Country Christmas and it crops up again on White Christmas Blue. The same with “Blue Christmas", “Frosty the Snowman", “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Another day, another country Christmas album. Yesterday, on theartsdesk, Kacey Musgraves’s A Very Kacey Christmas was given the once over. Today, it’s the more storied, more venerable Loretta Lynn’s White Christmas Blue, her second-ever Christmas album and the belated sequel to 1966’s Country Christmas. Fifty years ago, that album opened with its self-penned title track. In 2016, a remake becomes the second song on the new White Christmas Blue.“Away in a Manger” was on Country Christmas and it crops again on White Christmas Blue. The same with “Blue Christmas, “Frosty the Snowman", “White Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Anthologie 1953–2002 is a monster. A 20-disc set spanning almost 50 years, it tracks one of France’s most beloved singers and songwriters. Gilbert Bécaud died in December 2001, but songs from his posthumously released Je Partirai album are included. Fitting, as his music lives on and the release of this box set marks the 15th anniversary of his death.Outside France, Bécaud is less well known. Though his “A Little Love and Understanding” single charted in Britain in 1975, he did not make a Charles Aznavour-style crossover to mainstream recognition in the Anglophone world. He’s never been given Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Slade. McCartney. Jona Lewie. There’s a reason that every festive compilation album released since the mid-90s has featured exactly the same songs: the human race has lost the ability to write a Christmas-themed track that is just the right combination of schmaltz and saccharine to become an instant Mariah Carey-level classic.It’s not for lack of trying: almost every Christmas cash-in that arrives with us at theartsdesk includes at least one, usually more, self-penned number amongst the usual selection of classic covers. Sometimes, they come close to working (although I confess to having not Read more ...
Matthew Wright
TV’s Gareth Malone has been pounding the pavement from the Perranarworthal Handbell Ringers in Cornwall to the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band in West Yorkshire to curate a national expression of Christmas. Each group gets Malone’s motivational treatment, and the result is a shiny bauble of an album, ideal for engaging a broad family taste. Malone’s “British” selection of songs has an admirably cosmopolitan slant, embracing nationality in the sense of adopted experience rather than origin. From “Silent Night”, to the choral suite from the Disney hit Frozen, these pieces are part of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Now the celebrity-drug-addict phase of Pete Doherty's career seems to be over the question remains as to what sort of artist he really is. After all, Doherty's best material always appeared to be inextricably woven into his chaotic lifestyle. The new album, Hamburg Demonstrations, on the other hand, was apparently recorded entirely drug-free. It's given fans pause for thought about where Doherty-the-phenomenon ends and Doherty-the-talent begins. Before Tuesday's show one punter gave me his opinion. "The drugs were really an irrelevance," he told me, "What matters is Read more ...
Katie Colombus
If Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” makes you want to burn the nearest decorated pine tree and Michael Buble’s Christmas croons give you the urge to shove brussel sprouts in your ears, Pentatonix’s new festive album could be the perfect antidote to Xmas crabbiness.Known for their Christmas album of 2014 (in particular a hyper-hip version of The Nutcracker), this five-piece a capella group from Texas (Kirstie Maldonado, Mitch Grassi, Scott Hoying, Avi Kaplan and Kevin Olusola) offer up a few more festive songs with an unexpectedly cool twist. They sing in close harmony, combining Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Hailing a lift in torrential rain one night from an early 2000s Dylan concert at Docklands Arena – that long-gone ghost of a room – I fell into conversation with a fellow passenger who apologetically turned to me, admitting in old-fashioned Received Pronunciation, to booing the man at the Royal Albert Hall in 1966. You could see it now, I suppose, as a pioneering form of no-platforming – a safe space for the acoustic set. She was very polite about it, and I doubt if I would be able to pick out her RP boos on the latest two-CD set in the Official Bootleg series, The Real Albert Hall Concert. Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Live albums can be tricky beasts, often characterised by large excruciating dollops of self-congratulation and self-indulgence, and are only to be recommended to the most hardcore and forgiving of fans. Public Service Broadcast’s Live At Brixton is not one of those animals, though. Documenting the South London band’s gig at the Brixton Academy during their 2015 The Race for Space tour, it’s a fine sampler of PSB's recorded output to date, with added beef from JF Abraham’s bass and percussion, a 13-piece choir, and additional strings and brass. It is also a euphoric celebration by a band on a Read more ...