New music
Kieron Tyler
It’s a good thing After the Disco turned up in the post last November. Initial listens suggested it as a slight follow up to 2010’s eponymous debut. Living with the new album and allowing it to bed in was obviously the way to go. Unfortunately, repeated revisits haven’t revealed any depth or much to grab onto. The thin gruel that is After the Disco isn’t a worthy successor to Broken Bells and is nothing its creators Danger Mouse and James Mercer should be proud of. Yet more listens raise the questions of what this is for and why did they bother?After the Disco is propelled by either chugging Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Last night Lloyd Cole arrived on stage with a similar suede-and-corduroy air to that of his Eighties college-rock hits. Yet something was different. Over the last few years he has developed a real gravitas. It showed in the lines on his face and gunmetal hair; and it's this depth that critics have perceived on his recent album, Standards. Yet despite the critical acclaim the old troubadour is still not happy with how he’s “ disappearing into a niche”. In fact, he says, if this tour is a flop, he might give up music altogether.Whatever concerns Cole might have about his career, he didn’t bring Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
With that warm, slightly husky voice of hers - not unlike that of an old friend at the other end of the telephone - Suzanne Vega has always been one of those singers I’d happily listen to reading the Yellow Pages. To be honest, there are parts of the often mystical, always curious Tales From the Queen of Pentacles that would probably have been easier to understand if she had done, even if the names in Vega’s directory turned out to be as ill-fitting as Mother Teresa, the Knight of Wands and Macklemore.It’s an interesting one to unwrap, this first collection of new material in seven years, Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Torn between mainstream adulation and the select approval of the folk community, Seth Lakeman has recently seemed unsure of who his audience are. Propelled into the big time on the back of the Mercury nomination for his 2004 album Kitty Jay (recorded in his kitchen for £300), Lakeman then released two albums aimed squarely at the Tesco’s CD aisle (if not at impressing critics), before returning to his roots with the 2012 solo recording Tales from the Barrel House, celebrating the vanishing artisans of his native Devon. He seems now to be aiming for both audiences at once. The concept of Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Pete Seeger has had a vast number of tributes since he died aged 94 on Monday. That might seem surprising for an artist whose real heyday was over 50 years ago. Part of the reason no doubt was the dignified and steadfast aura of a man of the people and heartfelt activist. Along with his friend Woody Guthrie, he ushered in a period in American music when after the initial flush of rock'n'roll had subsided it became interesting to sing pop songs that were not mere romantic slush, but often had a political message. His mission was also to re-imagine the folk music of the steppes of America. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A funny thing happened to English pop acts when they embraced LSD in the 1960s. Whereas the original Californian musical tripsters suddenly started emphasising the cosmic nature of reality – think of The Byrds’s beautiful ‘5D’ – the English discovered a weird pastoral idyll, a Looking Glass world of village life through the lens of psilocybin. From The Kinks – who, admittedly, were halfway there already – to Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, whimsy and teapots and butterflies and bicycles were where it was at. In the 1980s, there was a strain of wilfully obscure indie that aimed again for this Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Finland’s Jaakko Eino Kalevi, who played his debut British show last November, heads up theartsdesk’s latest regular round-up of what’s come down from the north. A spellbinding display of individualistic pop, the London outing coincided with the arrival of his first non-Finnish release, the Dreamzone EP.Deadpan and stood at his ancient synth, he was accompanied by a drummer and sax player. The rhythms rarely deviated from the beat of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. The hollow sax evoked Chris Rea or the white-bread soul-pop of Hall & Oates. The whole enfolded like dub. Kalevi barely Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Once upon a time, there was an assumption that the DJs and remixers who emerged in the late 1980s would kill off touring bands like Depeche Mode. As it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth and 34 years since they first got together, Basildon’s finest are not only still providing remixers with plenty of raw material for their craft, but they are reproducing their recreations in the live arena. Last night, Depeche Mode not only played classic after classic in their original recorded form, but also a couple of re-arrangements by way of Goldfrapp’s understated reworking of “Halo”, Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Judith Owen has form for hanging around with the hairiest of musicians. Her husband is, of course, one Harry Shearer AKA Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls. Lately, however, Owen has been hanging out with a trio, who, although as hirsute as Smalls, prefer their music a little more on the smooth side. Russ Kunkel, Lee Sklar (pictured below) and Waddy Wachtel are the main collaborators on her forthcoming album Ebb & Flow and have worked with the likes of Carole King, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne. Now Owen has brought them back together.Their presence gives Ebb & Read more ...
joe.muggs
A quiet revolution has been underway over the last 10 or 15 years. As digital synthesis becomes more and more available and powerful, as does the ability to manipulate the sound of real wood-and-metal instruments inside a computer, so the boundaries between “electronic” and “organic” have been eroded to the point where they are now meaningless.While some of the artists doing that have been those who parade their technological nous – the Autechres and Flying Lotuses of this world, as well as more academic experimenters – a lot of innovation in this area has been taking place in the less Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The pared-down beauty and integrity of this remarkable new album is all the more exciting given the quantity of stylistic clutter typically associated with its two principal genres, jazz and soul. Showing excellent taste and artistic self-confidence, McFarlane has stripped away warbling vocal ornaments, stale generic phrasing and redundant backing tracks, trusting the assured, true-grained timbre of her voice to carry the emotional weight of her potent and original writing.A handful of these songs are surely destined to endure in the repertoire. They balance McFarlane’s exposed voice and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Dory Langdon: My Heart is a HunterAs a singer-songwriter, Dory Previn’s reputation rests on the extraordinary quartet of albums she made for United Artists in the opening years of the Seventies. This, her debut album, was issued in 1958. Commenting on his reaction to hearing “The Lady With The Braid” from 1971’s Mythical Kings & Iguanas for the first time, Jarvis Cocker said “I remember very vividly first hearing this record. I had moved to London. I was living in this squat and I was trying to put a curtain rail up. I was listening to the radio and it’s one of those moments where Read more ...