New music
Guy Oddy
The Glowing Man may be the declared final album from Swans’ present line-up, but it is certainly no whimpering exit. On the contrary, it is a thing of intense and magnificent beauty that doesn’t once let up for over two hours – despite several tracks that clock in at well over 20 minutes long.Opaque lyrics and stirring primal music that taps directly into the soul are again the order of the day for Swans. Moving from the Pink Floyd-esque dreamy but dark psychedelia of “Cloud of Forgetting” and “Cloud of Unknowing”, Michael Gira’s crew take in the menacing Gothic country blues of “People Like Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The fourth album from 25-year-old Texan singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz is a beautiful mope. It’s country-flavoured but is neither overflowing with syrupy emotion, nor honed to flinty Cash/Rubin desolation. Jarosz, who recently graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, hails from a 21st-century milieu, far from cotton-picking and moonlit porch banjos echoing across the sagebrush.Discovered, while still at school, by Alison Krauss/Harry Connick Jr-producer Gary Paczosa, and signed since to his label, Jarosz's Undercurrent, also produced by Paczosa in his Nashville studio, is a Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Led Zeppelin are an icon of musical class. Train, even their admirers must admit, are not. With this faithful, perhaps too faithful cover, the credit can only flow one way. Responses to this album have been a touchstone of journalistic identity, with our competitor sites posting sarcastic reviews, only to be accused below the line of snobbery, ignorance, and, most damning of all, hipsterdom.So let’s get this out of the way. Rather like Monet re-painted by numbers in Dulux high gloss, Train have re-created the outlines of Led Zeppelin, but without the depth and nuance. In songs like “Whole Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Life and art have generally had a troubled relationship. In the case of former hobo and punk-blues singer Seasick Steve, however, it all seemed so simple. When he sang "Dog House Boogie" on his extraordinary Hootenanny debut nearly a decade ago, it was his grit and authenticity, even more than his musical skills – though the two go hand-in-hand – that the audience fell in love with. Read any fan forum and it’s clear that Steve is loved because most audiences believe he’s experienced exactly what he sings.The official biography, documented repeatedly in the hundreds of press interviews Steve Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The accepted wisdom from last month's relaunched Rock or Bust tour was that the substitution of Axl Rose for incapacitated singer Brian Johnson was as masterful as it was surprising. Whatever the Guns N' Roses man lacked in mischief, the story went, he made up for with malevolent energy. Now, though, it's been over a month of the new band. So is Axl still brimming with curdled anger? Or was the initial hype just a product of the novelty of the situation?The pre-gig build-up was certainly rousing. The fact that the internet had already concluded Axl was a shoo-in helped create an atmosphere of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Eli Paperboy Reed remembers a time when soul music didn’t just mean aping some of Michael Jackson’s old moves and wearing a daft hat: a time when Otis Redding and others on the Stax roster were making some seriously soulful music. Eli is also well-acquainted with gospel music, having played in the band at Mitty Collier’s South Side Chicago church when he was a college student and through his involvement with the Mama Foundation’s Gospel for Teens programme in Harlem in recent years. My Way Home sees Reed plunder heavily from both traditions and produce an album that is, in the main, a wild Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Scottish singer-songwriter Malcolm Middleton has always had a restless creativity, right back to his days in the Bukowskian indie duo Arab Strap. He announced a few years ago that he was sick of playing solo gigs, expected to strum an acoustic guitar and delve into his mordant back catalogue. However, after a few years rootling about with his experimental Human Don’t Be Angry project, and an album with the artist David Shrigley, he popped up this year with a new album, Summer of ’13, and for the first time in years, he’s touring.He may be creatively restless, but as a stage presence he’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Adam Ant was one of the few who saw Sex Pistols’ first live show. On 6 November 1975, his band Bazooka Joe was playing Charing Cross Road’s St Martin’s School of Art. They found an uninvited support band had gatecrashed the evening. The impact of the interlopers on the then Stuart Goddard wasn’t instant, but he would go on to form The B-Sides and, then, Adam and the Ants, whose manager became Jordan, who worked at Malcolm McLaren’s King’s Road shop SEX. Adam was hotwired into what became codified as punk rock. But his music was never defined by templates.Mainstream impact took a while to come Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There are many ways to push musical boundaries. Some artists, from Albert Ayler to Can to Sunn O))) and far beyond, do it sonically. Xylaroo are not a band in this vein. Consisting of east London-based sisters Holly and Coco Chant, their music dramatically sparks listeners’ sensibilities through other means.On one level their strummed pop could be dismissed as something a friend might come up with, off the cuff, around the campfire. But only if that friend happened to be Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell or similar. Xylaroo push the boundaries, alright, but using a combination of glistening, Read more ...
Dylan Moore
“Are you enjoying Wales, John?” shouts a fan, eventually. Our returning hero has remained taciturn and all but static at his keyboard throughout an epic show that spans one of popular music’s most interesting and influential careers. Cale affects to have misheard. “Am I rejoining Wales?” he ponders. “I certainly hope so. I feel like I’m rejoining every time I’m here.”Singer-songwriter, composer, record producer and (of course) founding member of the Velvet Underground, John Cale is an inspired choice to open Cardiff’s new Festival of Voice, a biennial attempt to catapult the Welsh capital Read more ...
Barney Harsent
I looked around at the grime-flecked warehouse and surveyed the brick parquet floor. Even the dappled sunlight and birdsong couldn’t soften the realisation – or the ground, for that matter. “We’re going to struggle to get a tent peg in this,” I said to our travelling companions. Then, taking command of the situation, I boldly stated what we were all thinking: “I don’t think this is a campsite. I think this is a Jewsons.”We were on our way to Colebrook Lakes, the site of the Alfresco Festival, a brand-new, family-friendly affair in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Apparently home to the Read more ...
joe.muggs
This record passes the Rainy Day Greasy Spoon Test with flying colours. It's a vital one for any music that tends to the middle of the road: picture yourself in a cafe, mid-morning, mid-week, perhaps with a hangover, perhaps trying to avoid thinking about a personal problem, certainly not feeling excellent, staring at a mug of tea and the remains of an egg sandwich, with everything outside the windows damp and grey. How do you feel as the music comes onto the radio?This is not about suspending critical faculties, and it's certainly not about snobbery: it's about understanding the Read more ...