New music
Kieron Tyler
It was predestined that Lou Doillon would shadow her half-sister Charlotte Gainsbourg and their mother Jane Birkin by going into music. More surprising is that her full-length calling card, debut album Places, is entirely written by her. The female members of her clan have generally relied on material from outside, so Doillon is a trailblazer. Part of the annual Trans Musicales festival, this show at Salle de la Cité in Rennes, Brittany’s rain-soaked capital, was an opportunity to discover what she’s about before the UK release of Places next spring.Equally foreseeable is that Doillon’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
An album full of tunes you’ve been hearing all your life needs to be adept at reinvention. Cerys Matthews has already proved that she has a gift for repackaging the familiar in her enchanting Tir, which anthologises much loved Welsh folk songs and hymns. But then in that intoxicating voice, which breathily suggests both sweetness and transgression, she has just the instrument for sprinkling a fresh coat of fairy dust over, in this case, children’s carols.The pleasure of Baby, It’s Cold Outside: Christmas Classics from Cerys Matthews is also partly in the arrangements. There’s a distinct tinge Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It is quite a sight to see your children doing the heads down Quo boogie but, by the time the band reach “Whatever You Want”, that is exactly where my daughters, aged 14 and nine, are at. The rest of the Brighton Centre, not sold out but respectably full, is on its feet too. Just beside us a well-preserved man of around 70 is going completely bananas, shirt open, sweat pouring off. The majority of the crowd are in their sixties, perhaps even their late sixties, but by this stage of the gig a good portion of their decorum has been thrown to the wind in favour of shimmying like sassy teenagers Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s got to be difficult making a Christmas album. Not only are there all the preceding offerings which must weigh heavily, there’s the practical issue that it has to be completed way before any seasonal release date. For those choosing to make one, Christmas must be summoned early. The frosty, reflective mood created has to feel genuine even if the sun is blazing. With the seemingly effortless Tinsel and Lights, Tracey Thorn has made an album that suits any season. Its gentle pensiveness isn’t just for Christmas.Although Tinsel and Lights draws its songs from a raft of writers, it’s a Read more ...
theartsdesk
Herbert: Bodily Functions (Special Edition)Thomas H GreenMatthew Herbert is an electronic polymath whose career is fascinating whether you’re a fan of his music or not. Currently he’s working hard resurrecting the BBC’s iconic music and sound effects unit, the Radiophonic Workshop, and he’s recently released an album (as Wishmountain) sampling the top ten best-selling items in Tesco’s, while also having time for the odd Björk collaboration and the occasional tour wherein pig parts are cooked on stage in an anti-consumerist sonic performance art extravaganza. In short, Herbert has grown into Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although he has been recording since 2005, it was his 2011 album, Felt, which set Nils Frahm apart from the ever-swelling tide of modern classical minimalists. It was so intimate, so subtle, it felt almost like it shouldn’t be shared. The follow up has that same sense of peeking in on some private act, but it feels less uncomfortably illicit. On Screws, Frahm’s piano is naked, with nothing intruding.Even so, the story of how this album came to be made is distracting. In a fall from his bed, Frahm broke his thumb and decided to record one composition a night over nine nights, each played with Read more ...
Russ Coffey
From being disowned by his family to writing the ultimate hangover lament, Kris Kristofferson has, partly, led the life of a country song. The other part, however, has included a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, an illustrious movie career and dating Barbara Streisand. In 1971 he famously sang about being “partly truth and partly fiction - a walking contradiction”. Now, at 76, the Texan’s clever lines enjoy a lower profile. Still, this year’s Feeling Mortal has won widespread praise.Last night, Kristofferson largely avoided musing on life’s final chapter. Instead he leant his gravitas to a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A little-known fact about reality, seldom touched upon by quantum physicists in recent years, is that there’s a wormhole between Manchester in September 1981 and the far western Russian port city of Rostov-on-Don in the present. This would seem to be the only explanation for Motorama. Their sound has been transported intact directly from the era of producers such as Martin Hannett, a deliciously warm amalgam of early New Order and The Chameleons with a honey-sweet trimming of Orange Juice’s pop sensibility (although, admittedly, the latter hailed from Glasgow, the curveball in this theory). Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
Support bands tend to get short shrift, but it would be criminal not to give Evil Blizzard their due here. Made up of three bass guitarists with assorted effects pedals and a drummer who also sang, three members of the band were in pink pyjamas and wearing masks, while the fourth was in black leather and a Hawkwind hairdo. They produced industrial levels of noise around steady riffs and a variety of filthy bass sounds.One member removed his silver, robotic mask to reveal a scarecrow hood underneath, and a song later removed that too, only to be left with a third, featureless rubber face Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Usually when a band playing a venue the size of the Brighton Centre asks if the crowd would like to hear a new song the response is somewhat muted. However, this is a crowd of eager fans, average age around 17, and they yell back affirmatively with all their might. Rizzle Kicks are in their home city and it shows (especially when they later lead a chant for Brighton and Hove Albion FC – “Seagulls! Seagulls”). The song in question, “That’s Classic”, turns out to be a corker, built round a steel drum motif from Latin standard “Aquarela do Brasil” - the one repeatedly played in Terry Gilliam’s Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Over the last couple of months Mumford & Sons have quietly become the biggest band in the world. If there was a coronation it came at some point between the headline-making second album, Babel, and this sell-out first arena tour. When the announcement came earlier this week that the folky foursome are to headline next year’s 20th anniversary T in the Park festival, I seemed to be the only one who was surprised.Given the context, it was probably fair to consider the band’s SECC show as something of a dummy run for Scotland’s biggest stage. With their soaring melodies and heartfelt choruses Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Two years ago, I spoke to Dave Brubeck just before his 90th birthday. The occasion was being commemorated by a film executive-produced by Clint Eastwood, Dave Brubeck - In His Own Sweet Way, which was aired on BBC Four as one of several broadcast tributes to Brubeck's unflagging creativity over more than six decades. Brubeck himself, a trouper to his toes, was about to celebrate Thanksgiving with a string of performances at the Blue Note jazz club in New York, despite having had a pacemaker fitted a few weeks earlier. Although his tenth decade loomed, his recollections were sharp, his Read more ...