New music
joe.muggs
Few would have predicted it back when they were gooning around in over-tight Adidas t-shirts, but with the benefit of hindsight it makes sense that Blur should have the most convincing longevity of the Britpop generation. Why? Because more than any of their contemporaries, and despite all the personality clashes and narcotic breakdowns, they were genuinely a band. Yes, Damon Albarn was the leader, but he never eclipsed the other three in the way that Jarvis or the Gallaghers did. Even the raging bellend Alex James, though musically more or less pointless, was gravitationally part of the Blur Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A band are doing well if they have their audience laughing and cheering before they’ve even hit the stage. Such is the case with Public Service Broadcasting who show a creaky public information-style animation, with a distinct 1970s feel, prior to their appearance. In it we’re presented with Calman-esque cartoons Ralph and Geoffrey who each have contrasting approaches to using their mobile phones at concerts. Suffice to say things don’t end well for Geoffrey, who spends the whole concert waving his iPhone about taking dodgy blurred footage and getting in everyone’s way. Regular concert-goers Read more ...
David Nice
Poised vibrantly enough between the buried-alive monotony of Philip Glass and the dynamic flights of John Adams, Steve Reich’s Three Tales deserves a special place in music-theatre history ("opera" it is not). Ironically, since it deals with the two-edged sword of the 20th century’s major scientific developments, the video work with which the music interacts so brilliantly – by Reich’s former wife and long-term collaborator Beryl Korot – has been left looking a bit dated by rapid progress in that field since its 2002 premiere.Besides, after the pioneering speech-melodies of Different Trains Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There’s a certain sound - one that I’d describe as “pastoral folk”, without ever being certain of what that means - that has always struck me as quintessentially English. Jenny Lysander’s debut album is one that ticks many of those boxes: sparse arrangements, ageless vocals, even a song called “Lavender Philosophy”, which is about as pastoral as it gets without involving grazing animals. To immerse oneself, dreamily, in Northern Folk is to feel as you did the first time you heard Laura Marling and wonder how one so young could create something so wise and so timeless (at 21, Lysander is just Read more ...
fisun.guner
There’s no doubting the precocious talent of Laura Marling. At just 25 she recently released her fifth album, Short Movie, which matched the spiky introspection of song-writing previously driven by folk melodies with a new rock-orientated sound. Inspired by her two-year sojourn in LA, from which she returned late last year, the album tells of the usual romantic yearnings and scorned or broken love affairs, mixed with tales of everyday encounters with new age Californian mystics. A sense of both the expansive West Coast landscape and of cosmic space meets altered consciousness, prevailed. Read more ...
peter.quinn
From fulsome, modally inflected string lines (“Sintra”) to the funkiest of New Orleans brass grooves (“Atchafalaya”), this first major label album from Grammy-winning, NYC-based collective Snarky Puppy, paired here with Holland's crack Metropole Orkest under their principal conductor Jules Buckley, is a brilliantly arranged and artfully executed tour de force.Penned by Snarky Puppy bassist and bandleader, Michael League, while on tour with the band, each of the album's six movements was inspired by a different forest he has spent time in, from the swamps of Louisiana and giant redwoods Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Ron Sexsmith is a singer-songwriter who should, by rights, need no introduction: Critics and fellow musicians, after all, fall over themselves to praise the 51 year-old Canadian. Yet, despite a gorgeous back-catalogue and fans including Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello, widespread commercial success has, hitherto, largely eluded him. Still, the singer remains philosophical.Sexsmith is in London to promote his new album Carousel One (pictured below). Initially he wanted to give the record a joke title. It was to be called “Featuring Pitbull” – Pitbull being one of America's most Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In his recent theartsdesk interview, Squarepusher (or Tom Jenkinson to his mum) stated: “A subtle wave of conservatism has washed gently across electronic music over the last five years. One of the things the new record smashes against is that.” On this he really isn’t kidding, and Damogen Furies is unlikely to be heard as mood music to your shopping experience in any high street stores in the foreseeable future. Hardcore rave sounds bump up against abrasive electro and abstract funk in a powerful tempest that is far from chilled out.Opening track “Stor Eiglass” suggests an imaginary remix of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
No soul singer has been associated with one hit in quite the same way. Percy Sledge, who died last week at the age of 74, recorded “When a Man Loves a Woman” in 1966 and launched himself as a tearful balladeer. Its simple chord structure, featuring a descending bassline familiar from Pachelbel and Bach, was the bedrock over which Sledge howled plaintively of a lost love. There were other hits, until his producers retired in 1974 just as soul music was going priapic, but the first cut was always the deepest.When I met Sledge in 1994 he had his first new album out in 20 years. He was a Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Jazz-funk organ trio Wild Card have been slowly building a reputation for smoking funk tunes and grooves you could lose a pantechnicon in for some years now. Led by French guitarist Clément Régert, with organist Andy Noble and drummer Sophie Alloway, they perform with quite a range of guests, both instrumentalists and singers, which keeps the atmosphere of their repertoire fresh and varied. Their rise to prominence has accelerated recently with the release of their third album, Organic Riot, which has been garnering rave reviews internationally. It was launched last night at Jazz Café POSK, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bert Jansch: Bert JanschNorth Villas is a short street parallel to Camden Road, the main artery linking Camden Town to Holloway in north London. It’s off Camden Square, where Amy Winehouse lived and died. In August 1964, Bill Leader began recording what would become Bert Jansch’s debut album in his home at 5 North Villas. The first-floor flat had two living rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. Leader would set up his tape recorder in the same room as who he was recording and monitor what was being caught on tape through headphones.At the same time as Leader was using his home as a recording Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
To let you understand the spontaneous grin that burst across my face when I first heard Foil Deer probably needs a little context: I studied, and now have a job involving, corporate law. Still, there’s no getting away from the fact that the powerful feminist themes and dirty, grungy guitar work form only part of the reason that Massachusetts indie rockers Speedy Ortiz’s third album is such a fantastic listen: frontwoman and songwriter Sadie Dupuis’ wordplay has never been stronger. The line that made my day, since you ask, was “we were the law school rejects so we quarrelled at the bar Read more ...