New music
Thomas H. Green
Of course they had to end with “Gold”. It’s one of those songs which, once heard, even if you dislike Spandau Ballet, is impossible to remove from the brain, a bona fide Eighties classic. Lead singer Tony Hadley and guitarist Gary Kemp, the man who wrote their songs, even performed a short acoustic version earlier on, perched amid the Brighton Centre’s 4500 capacity crowd in the sound desk area. “Gold” is a joyful climax to a night of ups and downs from a band whose occasional musical highs are balanced by a welter of contradictions.Spandau Ballet started the Eighties in the avant-glam post- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s a particular sound that the best 1970s British punk rock has, scuzzy, scorched riffage emulating Chris Thomas’s multi-layered guitar production for the Sex Pistols. The Rezillos had it and they still have it. This is their first album since their 1978 debut, Can’t Stand The Rezillos, and it sounds as if it was made the following year rather than three-and-a-half decades later. The Rezillos, from Edinburgh, never embraced punk’s fury, nihilism or politics but, coming on like The Ramones crossed with The B52s, they fetishised sci-fi retro kitsch, looking a riot of quiffs, mod-ish ties, Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Platinum-selling singer Rebecca Ferguson has released two acclaimed albums, Heaven (2011) and Freedom (2013), though she broke through (in?) to the heart of the music-listening public on The X Factor (2010), when she came in runner-up behind Matt Cardle. Her voice oozes warmth and sincerity, and in only a few years she has acquired a passionate following. She’s also known for a troubled private life, which has become increasingly public. Last year she collapsed during a live episode of Loose Women; soon after she discovered she was pregnant; not long after that the baby’s father left her Read more ...
peter.quinn
Compered by the velvet-toned broadcaster Moira Stuart, the winners of this year's Parliamentary Jazz Awards were announced last night in a packed Terrace Pavillion at the House of Commons.Now in their eleventh year, the Awards are organised by the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group (APPJAG) and, since the sad demise of the BBC Jazz Awards, are now the UK's premier awards for the jazz community. Sponsored by the music licensing company PPL, this year's awards included more artist-focused categories, reflecting the incredible breadth and depth of the UK jazz scene.Special guest Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
These days, reflections on Madonna’s 30 years at the top of the pop podium may only be framed in terms of the pagan Triple Goddess: maiden, mother and crone – or, at least, that’s what the global reaction to The Fall That Was Heard Around The World® would lead one to believe. But with enough raunch among the 19 – nineteen! – tracks that make up the deluxe edition of Rebel Heart to make all three blush and a track which, guest rap from Nicki Minaj aside, is essentially a blow-by-blow reinterpretation of pop bad girl du jour Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop”, it’s clear that the only Read more ...
fisun.guner
What was that about the difficult second album? If you thought Ground of its own, Sam Lee’s Mercury-nominated album of 2012, broke new and fertile ground for traditional folk music, then you’ll find The Fade of Time even richer, even more musically ambitious. Here on this 12-track disc is an evocative and heady brew of global influences, featuring the koto, conch, uke, banjo, hunting horns, Jew’s harp, a variety of brass and strings, and wow, not an acoustic guitar to be heard. If you think you know folk, then you don’t know Sam Lee.Sampled sounds, from mineral to animal, archive material of Read more ...
Matthew Wright
With the use of her song “Undiscovered” in the soundtrack of the recent 50 Shades of Grey film, you’d expect the control Welsh sings about to be of the firm, if not positively disciplinary, variety. Yet this album, her solo debut, scores highly as a subtle, mature, rather delicate collection. We’re in thematically familiar soul-pop territory, but Welsh’s vocal skill, dramatic control of the musical narrative, and quality of the lyric-writing, all lift the release into a much more rarefied category.“Soft Control” may refer partly to an approach to relationships, but it’s just as relevant to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Tav Falco & Panther Burns: Hip Flask – An Introduction to Tav Falco & Panther BurnsStart with track three. “Bourgeois Blues” is a one-take, six-minute grind through the Leadbelly song, which also draws on Johnny Burnette and the Rock ’n’ Roll Trio’s “The Train Kept-a-Rollin’”. The words of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl are underpinned by base-level rockabilly. When a guitar solo comes, it’s as unhinged as that of The Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call my Name”. Aptly, Tav Falco dubbed his music “wreckabilly”.“Bourgeois Blues” was first heard on Behind the Magnolia Curtain, 1981’s classic Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mark Stewart is the singer and a founding member of iconoclastic band The Pop Group, who reformed in 2010. He grew up in Bristol and, with The Pop Group, between 1978 and 1981, pioneered an abrasively different post-punk sound based on jazz, funk and hip hop, with a direct and vociferous political edge. Their output, especially their debut album Y and the single “We Are All Prostitutes”, remain hugely influential within alternative rock circles.When The Pop Group split Stewart went onto work with Adrian Sherwood, Tackhead and the On-U sound stable, creating crushingly heavy music that Read more ...
Heidi Goldsmith
"The music will be loud," the slender usher warns on entry to altered natives' "Say Yes To Another Excess" – TWERK, as a Grime bassline shakes the flimsy theatre floor. She hands over a text-heavy programme and does not frisk me. This is no London Bridge warehouse, although bouncers giving out freesheets on the door could be a great way to get the middle classes down to a rave. For now regular Rinse FM DJs Skilliam and Elijah are coming to the ballet.As the audience files in the dancers are already twirling around the stage-cum-dancefloor costumed in variations on an Eighties camp disco / Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Chris Braide is at the heart of the LA songwriting machine, knocking up tungsten-plated radio candy with Britney, Beyoncé, Sia and the like. A Cheshire lad transported to Hollywood (he also wrote the music for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby), he’s long been a fan of Marc Almond. The Velvet Trail is built on that. Almond, is, of course, the iconic torch singer whose career with Soft Cell gave us some of the most marvellously on-point pop ever, and whose solo career has careened from a chart-topping hit with Gene Pitney in the late Eighties to an exploration of Russian folk songs. In 2010, he Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Did you know there's a heated debate going on about “hot stampers”? As the resurgence in vinyl continues, there are those who wish to attribute value to their own knowledge and to their vinyl collections. In the e-consumer trenches, where audiophiles heatedly discuss purchasing and repurchasing classic albums, there’s been much debate about major label reproductions from digital masters, about how they lose the richness of the originals. On the other hand, finding a “hot stamper”, a version cut early in the album’s pressing run, when the metal stamp from which it was imprinted was fresh, is Read more ...