New music
Katie Colombus
Listening to Everything At Once is like drinking a cup of PG Tips. It’s warming, comforting, gently familiar and distinctly British.The new album from the band that invented Coldplay, Keane, Snow Patrol et al, is like a gentle revision of a well-known sound. Opening with soft rolling beats, “What Will Come”, re-introduces us to the regular rhythms and unmistakable vocals of frontman Fran Healy.The album rolls on with the summer road-tripping playlister “Magnificent Time” which carries the mantra: “No regret, don’t you forget this magnificent time. Seize the day, don’t throw away this Read more ...
joe.muggs
Prince Rogers Nelson was the most gloriously disruptive presence in popular culture from the very start to the very end. Everything about him was off kilter and wrong: it's not for nothing that the first major biography of him was called The Imp of the Perverse. His songs were full of deranged filth, skewed social comment with a conspiratarian edge, had a very individualist take on Jehovah's Witness spirituality and mysticism, and all manner of personal cyphers and in-jokes. He was a constantly self-creating work of art of the most esoteric and incomprehensible sort – yet for all that he Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It was one of those bright spring days when it seemed every other radio station was playing “Mr Blue Sky”. It certainly didn’t feel like 30 years since ELO toured. But the fans at the O2, last night, knew exactly how long it’d been. Some may even have been counting the years. And the anticipation of whether Jeff Lynne could still cut it, was palpable. In the lengthy queues and security checks, conversation naturally turned to how exactly the 68-year-old might manage the energy of those hits.The main man shuffled on just after nine, following a slightly syrupy performance from support act, The Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Beth Orton (b 1970) is a singer-songwriter who first came to prominence via her collaborations with the Chemical Brothers, at the start of both their careers. She recorded an album with the producer William Orbit in 1993 but it was her 1995 album, Trailer Park, a canny amalgamation of folk and electronica, that really put her on the map as a solo artist. Since then, spending increasing amounts of time in the US, she has recorded a series of critically acclaimed albums, the latest of which, Kidsticks, her seventh, appears in May. She will be performing two special concerts at the Brighton Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Asphalt For Eden is a hip hop album with a difference. Featuring whoozy trip hop beats married to darkly psychedelic sounds and the growling delivery of MC Dälek, it is somewhat out of step with mainstream rap in both its sonic inventiveness and in the way that it holds a mirror up to society without lapsing into either lazy slogans or the tedious bitches and bling fantasies of many of the genre’s overlords.From the mid-1990s until some five years ago, Dälek was a hip hop crew that pitched Public Enemy grade rage with the sonic experimentation of My Bloody Valentine. They produced five Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Relentless is the word. The second studio album from post-punk jazzers Melt Yourself Down starts as it means to finish. It opens with a hard, pulsing bass guitar which sets the scene for “Dot to Dot”, a persistent chant suggesting Sufi adepts with a yen for Killing Joke. It ends, nine tracks later, with “Yazzan Dayra’s” melding of Nyabinghi percussion to the sound of an exotic market-stall barker and strident saxophone interjections. Over its 36 minutes, Last Evenings on Earth does not let up.The varied roots of the Melt Yourself Down sound are clear. They have collaborated with New York no Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The last time I spent hours on end listening to Xavier Rudd I was giving birth to my daughter. Weirdly, the anaesthetist had seen him perform in Australia a few weeks previously (this was a few years ago when Rudd wasn’t as heard of as he is now) and we bro’d about the magical coincidence pretty hard, in between contractions.To see him live was therefore a pretty big deal, seeing as what he essentially (musically) birthed my baby. There was a lot to live up to. I am thankful in life for many things – the fact that seeing him in the flesh did not disappoint, is one of them. The Read more ...
peter.quinn
It seems fitting that the propulsive playing of drummer Anton Eger is the first sound you hear on this latest studio recording by the Scandinavian/British jazz trio, Phronesis. While there’s plenty of warm-hearted lyricism and vibrant harmonic writing on the group’s sixth CD (their fourth for Edition Records), what’s really striking about Parallax is the absolute primacy of rhythm.Whether it’s the unforeseen metric modulations of Eger’s brooding opener “67000MPH”, which serve unfailingly to catch the ear, the circling, highly charged rhythmic blocks of pianist Ivo Neame’s “OK Chorale”, or the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Is there anything left to say about Sandy Denny? Sadly, she cannot say anything herself, as she died in 1978. So it’s left to what she released during her lifetime, posthumous appraisals and reappraisals, and packages and repackages to do the talking.In 2010, the career-spanning, 19-disc box set Sandy Denny was issued. That could have been the last word and was measured against her issued discography of four solo albums, the three with Fairport Convention, and one with Fotheringay, as well as sundry collaborations. Fotheringay were recently the subject of a box set and her solo albums have Read more ...
joe.muggs
Kathryn Williams has a lot to live up to. The last time I saw the Liverpudlian singer-songwriter play live was a completely unamplified gig in the Tricycle Theatre some nine years ago, and its intimacy and intensity remain seared in my memory as one of the most powerful performances I've ever experienced. So I was feeling some trepidation about seeing her play in my local south London parish church as part of the Sydenham Arts Festival: while her recent Hypoxia album is up there with her best, she can be inconsistent on record, with the occasional drift too far into daytime Radio 2 territory Read more ...
mark.kidel
Black bile, the dark blood which feeds the melancholy mood, runs through musics that resonate with the heart’s longing. In Arabic sawdah is a word which draws together the ideas of black bile and, in Ottoman Turkey, the pain-filled desire for the beloved. It lies at the root of the saudade of Portuguese fado but also the Bosnian musical genre known as sevdah or sevdalinka.In their second album Damir Imamović’s Sevdah Takht stay true to the tradition of their folk roots, while subtly playing with a more contemporary sound. They manage very skilfully to reach back to the pure form, Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Without wishing to repeat myself, small venues almost always work best. The intimacy they offer heightens emotion and increases impact while breaking down the barrier between artist and audience. There's a mathematical consideration, too – fewer people means fewer antisocial arseholes no matter which way you divide it. And so I find myself back in East Kent’s best venue, among some of Ramsgate's most upstanding, to see the swirling, melodic storm of Berlin/London duo The KVB. First though, there’s the surprisingly engaging prospect of support band M!R!M.Also a duo, M!R!M create a haunting Read more ...