New music
Kieron Tyler
Shaking The Habitual’s centrepiece – the seventh of its 14 tracks – is the 19-minute “Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized”. A tone which ebbs in and out, it’s occasionally underpinned by distant rhythmic colour. Although thoughts inevitably turn to the similarly lengthy “SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)", the 22-minute amelodic experience exemplifying Scott Walker’s recent Bish Bosch, the astonishing Shaking the Habitual is, over its 97 minutes, an album retaining connections with what is recognisably music. Even so, it’s still pretty far out.Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer – Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Over here, They Might Be Giants are mainly known for the insanely catchy “Birdhouse in My Soul”. There's also a general assumption that it's their only hit, and a suspicion that they're, probably, Canadian. In fact, TMBG are a Brooklyn-based band centred around founders John Flansburgh and John Linnell. A long and often successful career in the States has included several children's albums and even the theme for the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. The latter won them a Grammy. Nanobots is their 16th album and, quite consciously, looks back over their 21 years in pop.Impressively, it does so – Read more ...
simon.broughton
"Multi-instrumentalist" is a catch-all phrase that usually means somebody who plays flute, clarinet, sax and perhaps a bit of guitar. When it comes to Stephan Micus, he’s a multi-instrumentalist of an altogether different calibre. He plays hundreds of instruments – he doesn’t know how many – which he’s collected and commissioned from all over the world.Micus, who has a rare London concert this month, has just released his 20th album on ECM, which puts him up there with Keith Jarrett as one of the label’s most prolific artists. But Micus’s art is of a totally different nature. While Jarrett Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's an easy answer to James Blake's naysayers (and there are a lot of them): you're not listening loud enough. I made the mistake myself. Even knowing his early, brilliant electronic works, I was quite unimpressed by the breakthrough cover of Feist's “Limit to Your Love”, idly listened to on laptop or radio, until I heard it delivered over a club soundsystem and realised just how perfectly the song structure was built around the annihilating bass.What Blake does, and is doing better than ever on his second album, is, roughly speaking, what Radiohead have been fumbling for since Kid A. Read more ...
Michael Stephen Clark
Only an April fool would deny Emeli Sandé her right to rule as the home-grown pocket diva for the Smartphone generation. The current elfin queen of the UK pop charts took the stage in Edinburgh last night having already won over her capacity crowd on Amazon, i-Tunes and in miles of supermarket aisles.Her proclaimed heroines are Nina Simone and Alicia Keys, and both are audible in her output. Sandé can certainly sing to stir the senses, but can she move the soul? My suspicion is that beneath the polish of her long fingernails is a more engrained layer of spirituality. Songs like “Next to Me” Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s clear that Sarah Blasko is in a defiant mood right from the timpani roll that opens her fourth solo album. A lush, gorgeous work, in which the frantic strings of the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra offset the Australian singer’s husky, intimate vocals, I Awake is an enthralling and unsettling listen.Blasko is the first of the three singers behind Seeker Lover Keeper, her project with countrywomen Sally Seltmann and Holly Throsby, to release her own material since their collaborative album was released last year. Although her contributions to the project tempered its more sugary-sweet Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Simple Minds: Celebrate – The Greatest Hits +Of all the bands which surfaced in 1977 in response to punk, Simple Minds occupy a singular status. Despite line-up changes, they have never split up. After their 1982 success with “Promised You a Miracle”, they have never surrendered the glittering prize. Their enviable career is defined by a tenacity which can go hand-in-hand with a music that runs on rails. Although they can’t be faulted for sometimes putting their musical development on hold to embrace causes and the needs of the stadium, this chronologically sequenced triple CD suggests their Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“That’s the sad thing today,” said Martin Gore of Depeche Mode in the Guardian last Friday, “Most people who get involved in music are so normal. It’s supposed to be full of weirdos.” What’s great about the Flaming Lips, whatever your opinion of the sound they make, is that they are a major league indie-rock band who truly are weirdos.Led by the maverick Wayne Coyne, renowned for wandering across his audiences in a giant transparent bubble, they are both imaginative and unpredictable. Unlike so many bands who simply adopt psychedelia as a sonic style, they understand the psychedelic mindset, Read more ...
Rob Copsey
Those who have seen the music video that accompanies NKOTB’s new single “Remix (I Like The)” may be shocked to learn they own a wicked sense of humour. The clip itself sees an unassuming fan - played by “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” actress Artemis Pebdani - strutting her stuff a little too exuberantly at a pool party. While it’s a brilliantly self-aware nod to the now mature groupies they’ve no doubt encountered on their recent world tour with the Backstreet Boys, the song itself is a perky slice of dance-pop that sounds - whisper it - surprisingly fresh.Unfortunately, it’s also a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Among the artists Aly Spaltro, the 23-year-old who makes music as Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, calls to mind is Laura Marling. The whispery vocals of the youthful English folk singer may not seem like the most obvious reference point for Spaltro’s guttural, animalistic howl but bear with me: like Marling’s, Spaltro’s vocals are heavy with a wisdom far beyond her years and, much like Marling’s, the subject matter of Spaltro’s songs is often deeply horrific.Ripely Pine is a debut album four years in the making, but has lost none of its rawness for that. It opens in contemplative mode; Spaltro part- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Cold War Kids remain all mixed up. The Californian band appeared in 2006 bearing tasty blues-rock indie that leapt about in the same places Jack White hangs out. There was lots of media blather about their being a Christian band since most of them had met at the private Christian college, Biola University. Then it turned out they had much more complex and conflicted theological perspectives than were easy to sum up in music mag pull-quotes.Their first two albums were lively, punchy efforts in the blues-indie vein but on their last one, Mine is Yours, they appeared to be strugging to find Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Long before Amy Winehouse, there was a north London retro soul'n'jazz girl with a beehive hairdo making inroads into the Top 40. However, after a short run of hits in the early Eighties Mari Wilson never achieved the epic popularity of her dark-haired successor. Thus we find her in a Brighton basement playing a cruise ship set to a chicken-in-a-basket audience.The Komedia is laid out Vegas cabaret-style, all tables, wine bottles clinking and late middle-aged couples of all sexualities tucking into deep fried calamari, burgers, lasagne and, of course, chicken. Wilson’s show is gentle, designed Read more ...