New music
Kieron Tyler
Although The Kinks’ world was turned upside down from the moment “You Really Got Me” hit the charts in August 1964, the band’s main songwriter Ray Davies still had songs to spare. Some of his compositions ended up with singers like Dave Berry, Leapy Lee and Mo & Steve. Ray’s brother Dave even found that one of his songs was recorded by Shel Naylor. This extra-mural world fascinates Kinks fans.Even more enticing are the recordings by other artists to which The Kinks actually contributed. Leapy Lee’s 1966 single “King of the Whole Wide World” featured Dave, Pete Quaife and maybe Mick Avory Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
News that Richmond Fontaine were calling it a day with one final album and tour was not itself a surprise: across latter-day releases, from at least 2009’s We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River, the music had become progressively incidental, an increasingly subtle backdrop to frontman Willy Vlautin’s surprisingly widescreen storyteller’s vision of small-town Americana. Their decision to tie up loose ends with one final album, described by Vlautin as “an end piece for all the characters who inhabited the world of Richmond Fontaine over the years”, is not one most bands would take Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Back in the Seventies, Sniffin’ Glue kicked off a punk and post-punk trend for fanzines. By the following decade this had become a deluge, surrounding the burgeoning, self-consciously “alternative” indie music scene but also offering thousands of otherwise unheard voices a chance to rage at Thatcher’s Government in smudgily typed, crudely stapled, photocopied A5 pamphlets. The whole thing had an invigorating energy about it, connected to the times. The drive and feel of Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain has something of that lo-fi, politically raging, high excitement.Those wanting a Read more ...
Katie Colombus
I love Gwen. I really do. She is a Queen. And I love that she's on a journey, falling in love with The Voice co-star Blake Shelton after what we thought was one of Hollywood's most stable marriages to Gavin Rossdale fell apart. But there is much about her new album that is difficult to vibe with.This Is What The Truth Feels Like is a soundtrack to love the second time around, the songs a mix of reflecting on the past and looking towards the future. There's nostalgia in the fun, bouncy and hooky "Make Me Like You" with echoes of Cardigans Love Fool and a hark back to Kylie Minogue in her Stock Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Grime is having an ongoing moment. The current profiles of Skepta, Wretch 32, Stormzy, Novelist and others make this very clear. There at the beginning, along with Wiley and Dizzee Rascal, was Kano, as his new album Made in the Manor reminds us, harking back with bittersweet nostalgia to the scene’s earliest days as if they were decades ago. Brighton’s tight-knit urban hip hip hop community loves him for it and they’re out in force at the Concorde 2 tonight, representing as loudly and energetically as possible. The bullish ardour with which they greet him is something to behold. Whoops, “ Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Despite her best efforts, Jasmine Lucilla van den Bogaerde aka Birdy is, probably, still best known for covering Bon Iver's "Skinny Love", aged 14. Like a John Lewis ad that never was, the song possessed a winsome sophistication that won her a diversity of admirers.It also prompted the question, "what next?" Would Birdy go on to tread a gentle folk-rock path like Laura Marling – another well-heeled ex prodigy from Hampshire? Or would her sound develop into something altogether more idiosyncratic? Birdy's first self-penned album Fire Within failed to settle the issue. Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Adele is resting her eyelids as the audience spills in, packing the 02, a huge video projection showing off those luscious eyelashes and dark eyeliner that have become synonymous with Adele style. Her eyes open as we hear the echoes of "Hello" before she appears on a small square stage in the middle of the auditorium, resplendent in a long, black, glittery gown. It's a spine-tingling, faultless rendition of the first hit from her most recent album.This live show combines the three albums, 19, 21 and 25 - Adele's greatest songs, sung to great effect in her hometown of London. Walking to the Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Errollyn Wallen is celebrated both as a singer-songwriter and for her rigorous and communicative contemporary new music. Her works include 13 operas and a plethora of orchestral, choral, chamber works, solo and ensemble piano music and concertos, as well as award-winning music for film and TV; her Principia and Spirit in Motion were featured in the London Paralympics opening ceremony in 2012.Born in Belize, she moved to the UK with her family at the age of two. She studied at Goldsmith’s College, King’s College London and King’s College, Cambridge. Her Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After the release of 2006’s Barking, it was difficult to know what to make of Underworld. A couple of decent songs aside, collaboration seemed to have stripped away identity, leaving us with sketches on which a host of different producers had scribbled with their own, vivid, Crayola colours. For a band whose strength had been found in the album format, this was an unwelcome volte-face. Six years on, Rick Smith and Karl Hyde are back, but is Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future a return we should welcome with open arms?Early indications are certainly promising. “I Exhale” slaps us Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It says a lot that by the time Little Mix reach the final song of their encore, the recent mega-hit “Black Magic”, clad in silver sci-fi space bikinis and Barbarella-esque space-boots, it’s almost anti-climactic.Blonde Geordie member Perrie Edwards suggests to the capacity crowd – mostly girls aged between seven and 14 accompanied by their mums – that this is the song they’ve been waiting for all night. Perhaps it had been at the start of the evening but by the time the band reach it, an hour-and-a-half later, their mind-boggling show has rendered its ace-in-the-hole status redundant. For Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Damien Jurado’s last album, 2014’s Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, was, as theartsdesk noted, about “a man setting off in search of himself but never returning”. Its follow-up tracks the same unnamed character and his companion Silver Katherine on a road trip which may or may not be in his mind. Following a concept album with another integrally linked to its predecessor – and the album before that too, 2012’s Maraqopa – suggests Durado has faith in his listeners. They are, implicitly, going to follow the singer-songwriter on this journey.Ambition, creativity and an overarching vision Read more ...
Guy Oddy
During the ‘80s there was no US rock band that hoisted its freak flag higher than the Butthole Surfers, and certainly none that put out albums of the stature of Locust Abortion Technician and Hairway to Steven in such quick succession. Evolving from sloppy, lo-fi southern friend punk into experimental drug orgy art event and finally into fire-spitting hardcore psychedelic rockers – before, somewhat inevitably, being killed off by signing to a major record label – they were a visceral reaction to Ronald Reagan’s USA.Even in a genre with a propensity to offend the squares, the Butthole Surfers Read more ...