New music
Veronica Lee
Oh my goodness but that Mrs Carter knows how to entertain. Sparkles, glitter, flames, fireworks and costumes galore: The Mrs Carter Show had the lot and so much more. A tight eight-piece band, 10 dancers, three backing singers and extraordinary lighting effects - not to mention Beyoncé's honey voice, her sexy swagger and all-round bootyliciousness - made for a thrilling two hours in a cavernous space that she made feel almost intimate.Such intimacy, as afforded by the big screens either side of the stage, confirmed that there was no embarrassing Obama inauguration miming here; this was Read more ...
joe.muggs
Alison Moyet is not just one of the great voices in pop, she's one of the most likeable figures. A brilliantly no-nonsense character, she consistently skewers music industry pomposity, laughs in the face of the expectations the world has of female artists, and generally does precisely what she wants while retaining an abnormally acute sense of the absurdness of it all.All of which seems to have fed into the minutes, which is a fabulously immature album – in the sense that this is clearly a singer-songwriter having nothing but fun in the studio, like a kid in a candy shop. With production Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Continuing its voyage through Scandinavia’s music, theartsdesk opens the latest chapter in Norway with Still Life With Eggplant, the 16th album from Trondheim’s prolific, long-lived, occasionally challenging and always vital Motorpsycho.Their last album, 2012’s The Death Defying Unicorn, was an orchestrated collaboration with jazz composer and musician Ståle Storløkken which was performed at Oslo’s opera house. The one before that, 2010’s Heavy Metal Fruit, included the 20-minute “Gullible's Travails” and was almost as musically elaborate as …Unicorn. Their new album, the magnificent Still Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's pretty impressive that at 74 years old, the drummer Jaki Liebezeit should still be one of the most vital musicians on the planet. Maybe not all that surprising, though. From the moment in 1968 when he switched from free jazz to the narcotic jams of Can, he pioneered a rolling rhythmic style that suggested infinite patience and a man comfortable in his body, and it feels entirely natural that his beats should keep on rolling into old age. “Liebezeit” translates literally as “Love Time”, and it feels like he really does.Though he's collaborated with all kinds of big names including Brian Read more ...
bruce.dessau
There was a point about two-thirds of the way through last night's gig when someone lobbed something onto the stage in front of Mick Hucknall. It was not clear exactly what it was due to the sea of dancing mums in front of me, but my strong suspicion is that it was something made of lace and worn below the waist judging by Hucknall's bemused declaration: "That's Tom Jones's department."The funny thing is that Tom Jones had been on my mind a lot during Hucknall's set, and not just after the low-flying knickers. Last year Jones came to Hammersmith as part of a Blues Festival but his devoted Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
In a way, falling prey to hype-inspired backlash as early in your musical career as Vampire Weekend did has its benefits - assuming, of course, you have the long-term determination and songwriting prowess to back it up. When “Diane Young”, the first single from Modern Vampires of the City, emerged it was a bit of a shock: a high energy power-pop jam, complete with speed-it-up slow-it-down Elvis-inspired “baby baby babies”, it’s one of the best things the band has ever done.Nearly two years in the making, MOVTC (as it was cryptically known before the band announced the full title by way of a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Killing Joke: The Singles Collection 1979-2012Killing Joke were one of the most singular British bands to emerge in wake of punk. Their metal-edged, tribal stomp didn’t fit in with anything else going on at the time. Collecting 33 tracks from their singles and EPs to date, The Singles Collection 1979-2012 shows them as single-minded, a trait bringing a timelessness and consistency. “In Cythera”, from 2012, is as impactful as 1988’s “America”.Their sound has changed though. The rough edges and bark of “Follow the Leaders” (1981) or "Let's All Go (to the Fire Dances)" (1983) have been tempered Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
With two chart-topping singles under their belt, Rudimental have arrived. The unassuming, feel-good quartet from Hackney have chopped through mainstream radio’s mug-step cheese and post-Guetta club pop with an efficient hatchet of drum & bass soul-funk. Their debut album makes them sound like a great, energized festival act too, with lots of beats’n’bass to make feet shuffle, laced with a musicality attractive to casual listeners. What’s more, much of it doesn’t come across as calculated. When the trumpet arrives on the number one hit “Feel the Love”, it has an easy swing, and the guitar Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Reformed rock bands may be ten-a-penny but no other return quite matches the resurrection of Alice In Chains. The first grunge band to break big with their 1990 debut album Facelift, Alice In Chains matched Nirvana both in their ability to marry heavy riffs with haunted melodies and a genuinely desperate sense of despair: on Facelift they sang "We Die Young" while 1992’s Dirt finds nearly every song mined with self loathing alongside odes to heroin. Unsurprising then - if still shocking - that vocalist Layne Staley and bassist Mike Starr both went to early graves.Yet guitarist Jerry Cantrell Read more ...
peter.quinn
Some vocal jazz can be so anodyne that it barely registers on your consciousness, as anyone who's ever heard a jazz wannabe dusting down “My Funny Valentine” will know. A Liane Carroll gig, on the other hand, offers a roller coaster ride of emotions: joy, pain, hope, loss. With the ability to make every song sound like a personal experience, Carroll is one of the few singers who can make your spine tingle for an entire set.Launching her exceptional new album Ballads last night in a newly refurbed Pizza Express Jazz Club, a luxuriant first set featured the singer with exquisite string Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Eagles recorded their first two albums in London in the early Seventies, though they couldn't have imagined they'd be back 40 years later to present their new documentary, History of the Eagles Part One, at Sundance London. There is, as you may have surmised, also a Part Two, which is available in the DVD and Blu-ray package that goes on sale on Monday 29 April.The band now comprises Glen Frey, Don Henley, Timothy B Schmit and Joe Walsh. Former lead guitarist Don Felder, once a major stakeholder in the cash-spinning conglomerate that the Eagles became, has been cast into limbo following a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Rock geeks will generally tell you that Deep Purple needs to include either Ritchie Blackmore or Jon Lord to be truly deserving of the name. Sadly, neither will ever again be available for duty. Lord – to whom this album is dedicated – passed away last year. Blackmore irrevocably turned his back on rock years ago. Their absence, however, has little to do with this album's deficiencies.Short of hiring a spirit-medium to bring back Lord, the band couldn’t have achieved a more classic organ sound than that of Don Airey. Guitarist Steve Morse is equally virtuoso and none of the others performs Read more ...