New music
Barney Harsent
The weight of expectation can be a terrible thing to bear. When Since I Left You, The Avalanches’ patchwork party debut, was released in 2000, there was no sense of how long it had taken to make, just a collective intake of breath at the dense layers and intricate detail. Plundering anything and everything in their bid to create this delightful decoupage, it was the sheer scale of the band’s collective imagination that thrilled. How could any follow-up possibly compare?Listening to their long-awaited comeback Wildflower, which has been 16 years in the making, it sounds like they've not given Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Bands have grown slack about releasing albums. The Beatles used to pump them out, releasing both Help and Rubber Soul in the first half of 1965, whereas, say, Bastille’s second album arrives three years after their debut (although they released a “mixtape” in-between). Feeble. Kudos, then, to The Fiction Aisle, the newish project from Thomas White of Electric Soft Parade and Brakes. Their second album appears a mere six months after their debut. And it’s well worth investigating.Debut Heart Map Rubric was an opulent orchestral affair, described here as “hewn in the shadow of John Barry, John Read more ...
Thomas Rees
“Can you take a picture of us looking really middle-aged?”Two woman in their forties are enjoying the sunshine on the opening afternoon of Love Supreme, sipping prosecco from the comfort of their fold-up camping chairs as a charismatic, vapour-voiced Lianne La Havas launches into “Unstoppable”. I watch them scroll through the photos I’ve taken and collapse into fits of giggles. The funny thing is though, they fit right in. They’re doing this festival as it was meant to be done.The fold-up camping chair is the unofficial emblem of Love Supreme – the leitmotif for the weekend. They’re Read more ...
Andrew Cartmel
The year 1987 was a notable one in music history. In February, Burt Bacharach won the Grammy for best song with “That’s What Friends Are For”, and two months later Joss Stone was born in England. At the age of 17 Stone would be nominated for three Grammies of her own, and at 19 would become a winner. She remains a platinum-selling singer and songwriter at the top of her game.But it’s Bacharach who has made the most astonishing mark as a writer and recording artist. One could cite his nine number ones and 66 top-40 hits, three Oscars and eight Grammies, but bare facts and figures can’t begin Read more ...
joe.muggs
If last night made anything clear it's that some things are still some way beyond the reach of hipster reappropriation. The audience in Hyde Park for Carole King was 99% white and middle-aged, with the very few younger people scattered about appearing to be teenagers there with their parents. Within that, though, there was a broad spread of class, and – reflecting the appeal of King's Tapestry album at the time of its release – everyone from grizzled old hippies to a whole legion of straight-as-a-die mums and dads of the kind who have probably only bought half a dozen other albums since the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
For a self-made band that found success via the creation of quirky, imaginative YouTube videos spread via social media, there's a level of expectation regarding the same kind of creativity in their live shows. But in fact Canadian indie band Walk Off The Earth's REVO tour experience is a very simple one. Starting with "Rule the World", the band seemed understated, even a little unsure. But then came "Walking Off the World Tonight", a song containing lyrics that talk you through the building of a song – rusty old guitars, a shaker and a uke, being that’s all that’s needed to create Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pictured above is the label of an exceptionally important Pink Floyd record issued last November. Only a thousand people bought a copy. That was the amount that hit shops. Pink Floyd 1965: Their First Recordings was a double seven-inch set with a historic importance inversely proportionate to its availability. It was the first ever outing for the earliest recordings by the band and, as such, the earliest compositions for them by its prime songwriter Syd Barrett. He died on 7 July 2006 at age 60, and a look at this hard-to-find yet significant release is a tribute to his memory.The band is the Read more ...
howard.male
When David Bowie died in January, one person quick off the mark with a striking and respectful tribute was the American composer Jherek Bischoff with Strung Out in Heaven – a string quartet medley of half a dozen of Bowie’s songs. And in fact we‘re back in Bowie territory here in that these tentative yet austere instrumentals are full of romantic yearning and physiological unease reminiscent of the ambient sides (in vinyl terms) of the thin white one’s Low and Heroes.The main difference is that Bowie, Brian Eno and Tony Visconti utilised synthesisers and Bischoff has a preference for Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Another splendidly eclectic globalist radio show hosted by Peter Culshaw. The show's featured album of the month is the impeccable The Woman at The End Of The World by the veteran Brazilian songstress Elza Soares. We have remixed desert blues, Pakistani film jazz, Romanian brass mayhem, avant folk from Ukraine and a track from what promises to be the hit world music album of the summer - Calypso Rose’s Far From Home. Not to mention a world exclusive preview of Susheela Raman’s new album (a gamelan reworking of the Beatles psychedelic classic "Tomorrow Never Knows"). To listen Read more ...
Thomas Rees
£100 – £175 is a lot of money to pay for two hours of music, but that’s what it cost to see Pat Metheny at Ronnie Scott’s this week. The guitar great is in town with his new quartet, a dream team comprising British pianist Gwilym Simcock, bassist Linda Oh (a major name on the New York scene who I first saw performing with Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas’ Sound Prints quintet) and drummer Antonio Sánchez, a long-time Metheny collaborator and the composer of the acclaimed score to Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman.Shoehorned in at the bar, with the rest of the club packed to the rafters, I Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Every decade throws up a handful of guitar acts intent on capturing the mood of the age. The Noughties, for example, marched to the spiky rhythms of Kasabian and Kaiser Chiefs. Almost a decade on and the current crop have a somewhat heavier touch. Bands like Biffy Clyro, for instance, set out their intent – to speak with a serious rock voice – with impressive tattoos and heavy chords. Except Clyro also serve their heavy dishes with a side order of mainstream AOR, which makes some doubt whether it's really rock at all.A parallel might be drawn with Imagine Dragons' mega hit " Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Not every Glastonbury can be blazing summer. 2016 was hard work, with real world gloom permeating the already damp party bubble. But, as your teachers used to say, you only get out what you put in. The only way to take things was to go hard or go home, no quarter given and pay later.Thus, this report comes way after the rest. The contemporary media is focused on putting content online as fast as possible. A response after the event is commercial suicide, no longer an option. But how can you smear yourself in Glastonbury’s madness if you spend half your time in the Media Tent, a dead zone of Read more ...