New music
Kieron Tyler
Winston Holness started his own record label in 1969. Missing a finger, he became known by many folks as Niney. Born 7 December 1944, he had lost a thumb in an accident at work. By the point his imprint debuted, he had sung on a Clement “Coxsone” Dodd-produced track and was working as a salesman for other producers, including Clancy Eccles, Bunny “Striker” Lee and Lee “Scratch” Perry.Niney would get on a bike and take records to dances where he tried to get DJs to play them. He was also shadowing Bunny Lee in the recording studio, picking up on how records were produced. He began co-producing Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Dee C Lee was born Diane Sealy in London in 1961. She is best known for her 1985 hit “See the Day”, later covered by Girls Aloud, and for being in two of the Eighties' most notable pop acts, The Style Council and WHAM!. But she was also prolifically involved in multiple other musical projects, and now has a new album appearing, Just Something, her first in over 25 years.Lee’s first break came through talking her way into working with the British soul outfit Central Line, who had a couple of US club hits in 1981. From here, EMI picked her up as a session singer and, alongside Shirlie Holliman Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hey Panda is unlike any previous High Llamas album. While the characteristic traces of late Sixties and early Seventies Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks and Steely Dan are here, they have become melded with a sensibility lead-Llama Sean O’Hagan has absorbed from multifaceted US hip hop producer J Dilla – whose approach to rhythm and song structure rewrote standard linear templates.In the promotional material for the first High Llamas album – the title comes from a panda seen on TikTok during the coronavirus pandemic – in eight years, O’Hagan is quoted saying “when I heard J Dilla in the early 2000s Read more ...
David Nice
In what feels like the beginning, or at least the Old Testament, there was Riverdance. Now, ready to flow through the world once the world knows it needs it, there’s a rainbow-coloured river of just about everything musical and choreographic that’s found its place in contemporary Ireland, performed with a pulsating energy as well as a poetry that stops you wondering too much about all the connections.Such is WAKE, created by pioneering company THISISPOPBABY's Jennifer Jennings, the polymathic Philip McMahon and Niall Sweeney with a score by Alma Kelliher, who sings superbly throughout. Read more ...
Cheri Amour
Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield never set out to play country music. In her teens, she performed in a high school power pop band, The Ackleys, alongside her twin sister Allison. A few years later, the siblings formed PS Elliot, a riot grrrl group. They even nabbed a support slot with explosive punks Ceremony in their hometown of Birmingham, Alabama (ruffling a lot of feathers in the hardcore scene at the time).But more recently, Katie Crutchfield has been leaning into the country thing. In 2017, she toured solo with her partner and Kansas City troubadour Kevin Morby. Heading out onto the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Jim and William Reid’s musical trajectory has been extraordinary. They started out by out-punking punk with terrifying noise barrages and wilfully clumsy three-chord thrashing, but quickly revealed a deep love of classic pop song structures which became ever clearer as they sonically mellowed in the early stages of their career.From there, in the early 90s, they managed to catch a wave as elder statesmen of alternative rock – but suffered from creative and personal diminishing returns, eventually acrimoniously breaking up at the end of the decade. They reconciled in 2005 and very Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
On this, their 10th album, the melodious Mancunians started at the drum kit and built from there. This is no bad thing. The overall effect is wide-ranging, surprising and altogether more uplifting than either the delicious despairing Giants of All Sizes (2019) or gentle, soulful Flying Dream 1 (2021).We kick off with “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years”, (for instance, “Of course I’ll live to 96 and fix the welfare state”) a self-deprecating piece of analysis that packs in the influences without ever being derivative. As Garvey puts it, “We referenced The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Crashing chords are followed by a spindly, untrammelled solo guitar. After this subsides, the singer lays out the issue: “I try, I cry, I just can't see why. It's clear, she's near, the sights and sounds I hear.” He’s distressed, his anguish palpable, All the while, slabs of guitar squall get ever-more edgy, increasingly wigged out. There are more solos which aren’t far from those of The Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call my Name.”This monumental recording is “Frustration,” the top side of a self-issued March 1967 single by Long Island garage band The Mystic Tide. Aesthetically, it wasn’t Read more ...
mark.kidel
Julia Holter has created a long line of albums that trade on sophisticated poetry, both lyrical and musical, and her latest, perhaps the most adventurous of all, inhabits a world where nothing is certain, narratives are disjointed, and the imagination of the listener is left to run free.Los Angeles, so grounded in showbiz commerce, is also the city of angels, and the place where dreams can be transformed into reality. Perhaps not surprising that the city should often produce music – from the warm embrace of dream pop to the edgy experimentalism of avant-garde experiment – that has the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Some icons sit back and bask. Kim Gordon does not. She has occasionally intimated that her New York cool and relentless work rate may be down to a smidgeon of imposter syndrome, even after all her years on the frontline. Whatever the truth of it, her output since Sonic Youth (and her marriage) dissolved in 2011 has been prodigious. It’s ranged from new band projects Body/Head and Glitterbust, to film roles, to art exhibitions, and more. But perhaps most dynamic are her solo albums with producer Justin Raisen, of which this is the second. The Collective successfully continues their journey Read more ...
graeme.thomson
In February 2001 a brain aneurysm nearly killed Karl Wallinger. It didn’t do World Party many favours either. The aftermath of devastating illness resulted in a five year hiatus for his band, followed by a gradual, tentative return. Since 2006 there have been shows in Australia and America, but no new music and no gigs on this side of the pond. Until now.Wallinger has returned to the fray with a five disc collection called Arkeology. Spanning 1984 to 2011, it contains a couple of new songs but is largely comprised of postcards from the past, written but never sent. There are demos, B-sides, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Just as it’s not the best idea to judge a book by its cover, it’s also not advisable to judge an album by its insipid title. Led Zeppelin IV and Leonard Cohen’s Ten New Songs being obvious cases in point.To the list of uninspired album titles which hide a fine bunch of songs, we can now add the most recent disc by the Dandy Warhols. For within the grooves of Rockmaker, there is a cracking collection of lively and snarky Power Pop tunes. There are also a stella group of mates on board, including Slash, Black Francis and everybody’s favourite American Nan, Debbie Harry, who clearly aren’t just Read more ...