New music
Kieron Tyler
January 1966 is a half a century back but some of the music released 50 years ago this month remains fresh, vital and timeless. With its biting invective and energy, Bob Dylan’s “Can You Please Crawl out of Your Window” will never lose its visceral edge. Dusty Springfield’s joyful, kinetic “Little by Little” is eternally alive. Author Jon Savage goes further and pinpoints the whole of 1966 as “the year that shaped the rest of the century”. His proposition uses the year’s pop music as evidence for 1966 as a year like no other: one which was pivotal and irrevocably changed the world.Savage Read more ...
mark.kidel
From the younger generation’s offerings of the past year, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly stands out, sparkling with invention, risk-taking, personal openness and social engagement. Bob Dylan’s interpretation of songs made famous by Frank Sinatra, would seem, in comparison, to be taking a more conservative path, revisiting songs that sat squarely in the middle of the road when they were first written, mostly before the mid-point of the last century.And yet... Dylan’s sweetly melancholic series of classics from the great American Song Book have a freshness that makes them totally of now. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When was the last time a singer really spoke to your inner thoughts? Not the sanitised version you offer up on Facebook, nor even your occasional breakdown, but the everyday stuff – the indignation, cynicism and justifiable anger you carry around with you. That was John Grant's Grey Tickles, Black Pressure in a nutshell. At face value the stern-faced singer may have been exploring the experiences of being a successful middle-aged gay artist with HIV and piles, but there was more. By offering such a candid view of his life he also became a darkly humorous proxy Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Music can be passed down through generations like family heirlooms, precious and forever.For me, I was gifted Johnny Cash, Perry Como, Burt Bacharach, Joni Mitchell, Elton John. Songs that have resonated with me throughout my whole life, seeing me through good times, hard times, first dances, big birthdays or life-changing gigs.For my kids, I want to give them Jewel. Her musical poetry has seen me through key moments – those first tentative steps taken with Pieces of You and Spirit when I was living alone in London for the first time at 18; or This Way, when I was finding my path, travelling Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Motörhead played loud rock ’n’ roll. Now, like The Ramones, they are gone. They burned with unbelievable vigour from the mid-Seventies until earlier this year, when the wheels started to fall off Lemmy’s wagon. His health suddenly gave way – as was clear at this year’s Glastonbury Festival – and now, as one of his greatest songs roared with rabid conviction and a cheeky wink, he has finally been killed by death.Whatever their line-up, from the mid-Seventies until his death on December 28 this year, Motörhead were Lemmy Kilmister’s conception. He was a confident, down-to-earth, post-hippy Read more ...
theartsdesk
So, the first day's done. We awake, bleary-eyed and emerge from our tents and survey the scene. No matter how bad it looks for our immediate future health, the clouds are sure to clear before the inaugural beer and opening bands. The quality continues as we run through the very best we've seen this year to create the best bespoke festival we can imagine given theartsdesk's collective gig-going this year. In short, ladies and gentlemen… welcome to Sunday's line up of theartsfest 2015.MAIN STAGEMadonna 10.00 - 11.30It was perhaps the most-anticipated live tour of the year, though in many Read more ...
joe.muggs
For some musicians operating on the leftfield, achieving accessibility or commercial success means compromising their unique vision. Not so with Los Angeles singer-songwriter-producer Julia Holter. Her first three albums – four, if you include 2009's home-burned CDR Celebration – were intriguing, if blurry, windows into a complicated inner world, within which intensely felt dreams and extraordinary erudition tangled up into constantly moving patterns, but the haze rarely revealed any distinct shapes.Have You in My Wilderness, however, marks a dramatic coming out into the world: not only does Read more ...
theartsdesk
The festival market is one that has, like much of Britain, become oversaturated of late. Here at theartsdesk however, we feel that there’s room for one more as long as it’s of the highest possible quality. Here, then, is our line-up, a dream festival pulled together from our writers’ highlights of the past year. It’s two days over two stages and, best of all absolutely no danger of getting some hideous water-borne disease while sleeping in a substandard tent. SATURDAY MAIN STAGEThe Prodigy: 10.00 - 11.30The Prodigy may have been going for a quarter of a century but their fire is far Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Revealing a new story which completely rewrites an existing one is not easy in the world of reissues. With so much already known, and with pop and rock history constantly being revisited, it’s always surprising when a fresh tale is told. And it’s even more so when it’s actually worth knowing. Although issued in June, Saved by the Bell: The Collected Works of Robin Gibb 1968-1970 has been saved for the end of the year as it was instantly apparent that it did, indeed, rewrite history. It also included a wealth of extraordinary music, most of which had never been previously released – or even Read more ...
Guy Oddy
To say that The Suicide of Western Culture’s Long Live Death! Down With Intelligence! appeared without fanfare in November would be an understatement. Emphatically underground without even a listing on Amazon UK, the Barcelona duo’s record company were clearly not expecting great sales from their third album. Nevertheless, The Suicide of Western Culture certainly provided a sonically enthralling disc that is head and shoulders above anything released by any of their leftfield fellow travellers in 2015.Long Live Death! Down With Intelligence!’s low tech approach marries a post-rock attitude to Read more ...
peter.quinn
My Album of the Year is The Thompson Fields, a stunningly beautiful collection of eight new pieces by the acclaimed composer, arranger and bandleader, Maria Schneider. It's one of those incredibly rare albums in which every element – breathtaking textural detail, gorgeous melodies, transfixing solos and the sheer expressivity of the playing – comes together in a kind of magical alignment.The magisterial Arriving by Loose Tubes, the final piece of the band's valedictory residency at Ronnie Scott's in September 1990, following Dancing on Frith Street ( Read more ...
Jasper Rees
They say there are no second acts, but in the world of contemporary dad rock there’s little else. This year Squeeze became the latest band to re-form, not in quite the original line-up, but in an incarnation which patched up previous cracks between its two front men. The result was a cheerful tour and an enlightening album. I caught the live show at the Royal Albert Hall, where the old songs inevitably fared better than the less familiar new ones. In their studio incarnation, the robust new songs have the potential to sink into the marrow.Cradle to the Grave is the latest addition to a small Read more ...