New music
Thomas H. Green
Joe Walsh is one of classic American rock’s guitar heroes. For the solo at the end of The Eagles' “Hotel California” alone, he earned his place in those ranks, but he’s done a whole lot more in the 44 years he’s been a professional musician.Born in Kansas in 1947 and raised in Ohio and New York, Walsh first gained profile in the heavy rock trio the James Gang before moving on to his own band Barnstorm then going solo. His combination of technical skill, tight riffs and wry lyrics garnered US appeal and when he joined The Eagles in 1975, he gave their sound a steroid edge, co-writing “Life in Read more ...
Russ Coffey
If, stripped-back and acoustic, a rock singer’s worth may be judged, then last night the Palladium sure had the opportunity to measure Chris Cornell. And, although these days unplugged can just mean the addition of a couple of steel-stringed guitars, that wasn't how Cornell played it. One man with a six-string and a microphone. That was it. And, blimey, for a man who over the years has given audiences every permutation of rage, angst, and torment, he showed that when he wants he hasn’t half got a sweet set of pipes.This was unlikely to have come as news to anyone in the crowd. They all seemed Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The moment you reach “I Call This Home”, the third track of Saint Saviour's debut album, it’s obvious this is an album to stick with. A pulsing rhythm beds guitars that reverberate like vintage Cure. The voice is quavering, anguished. Then it opens up. Suddenly driving and tense, the dramatic, shimmering song sounds like an anthem in waiting – albeit one with a maverick sensibility akin to that of Fever Ray, Goldfrapp and Marc Almond. It fits that Saint Saviour has played live with Hurts.Saint Saviour is Becky Jones. Formerly with the electropop outfit The RGBs, she then sang with and fronted Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“This is such fun”. Martin Horntveth, Jaga Jazzist’s drummer, can’t contain his excitement. Standing up behind his kit, he radiates joy. Considering that he and his band are Norwegian, typically not given to overstatement, what he describes as fun would be off the pleasure scale by non-Nordic standards. The meeting of Jaga Jazzist and The Britten Sinfonia was an unqualified success, one of those rare one-off concerts where band and their temporary collaborators seamlessly connect.The Norwegian instrumentalists and the British ensemble came together at The Barbican last night as part of the on Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Best Coast has always been the quintessential California band, an identity the duo has embraced so fully that the artwork for their latest album features the bear that is the state’s mascot. It would be clichéd to remark on the unsuitability of the band’s sun-kissed fuzz-pop for the sort of damp, drizzly evening that soaks through three layers, so it was a relief that frontwoman Bethany Cosentino did it for me. “We thought we’d bring you some sunshine,” she said, introducing “Summer Mood” from buzzworthy 2010 debut Crazy For You, “but I guess not. We like it though.”But then, that’s the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Apparently Cheryl Cole is now “the nation’s sweetheart”. These days that doesn’t mean broadcasting sung radio support to a besieged island while the Nazis plot our demise 21 miles across the English Channel. No, instead, all it requires is smiling dutifully behind the gnome-like ancient Queen beside a load of passive, botoxed old pop stars while Madness’s saxophonist goofs about as if he were the only actual human being left in the entertainment industry. And then there’s this, her third album.Do we really have to talk about the music? Surely that’s not the point of Cheryl Cole? Or “Cheryl Read more ...
theartsdesk
Can: The Lost TapesKieron TylerDespite being compiled from previously unreleased material, the extraordinary The Lost Tapes is as wonderful as last year's 40th Anniversary edition of Tago Mago. This archive trawl outpaces previous exhumations like Limited Edition, Unlimited Edition, Delay ‘68 and Prehistoric Future by a very long distance. Not because it’s a three-CD set, but due to the sheer quality of what’s heard. Can still had material on the shelf equalling what they issued. Little is from the post-Damo Suzuki configuration of the band (it’s roughly half-and-half between the Suzuki and Read more ...
joe.muggs
So here it is, our fourth show of new, rare, exclusive and peculiar music - as ever recorded at Red Bull Studios with Brendon Harding ably manning the machines.As ever, the show is vaguely themed, with Peter and Joe doing their best to emphasise "vaguely" by looking at areas where ideas and genres blur. This time round, they are looking at jazz and its offspring, asking the question "where does jazz stop?". So they have Armenian jazz, Chicagoan ghetto-electro jazz, Croydon grime jazz, Icelandic jazzy folktronica, Hungarian jazz and Ethiopian jazz-funk, as well as some music from Brazil so far Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Naturally it couldn't be anything as straightforward as a mere album. Rather, Smashing Pumpkins supremo Billy Corgan would have it that Oceania is "an album within an album", and that its 13 songs form a subset of the ongoing Teargarden by Kaleidyscope project, part of which appeared in digital download format in 2009. But prune away all the baggage and Oceania stands up as a very plausible specimen of Pumpkinness. It also marks the arrival of a brand new line-up, namely drummer Mike Byrne, guitarist Jeff Schroeder and the band's latest female bassist/vocalist Nicole Florentino, but as ever Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Sex Pistols played their final live show on 14 January 1978 in San Francisco. According to the third and final programme in the Punk Britannia series, “for many, it would be the end of punk”. It certainly was for ex-Pistol John Lydon, who'd form Public Image Ltd. Taking on the task of tracing what happened next was a challenge. Nothing was neat. Loose ends, new strands and evolution of the existing meant it couldn’t be. If this programme succeeded, it was in portraying the turmoil that came in punk’s wake.Bringing order where there is chaos is always difficult. As an overview of the Read more ...
joe.muggs
We're extremely happy to have the first viewing of this beautiful video by Grammy-nominated director Eric Epstein for Hilary Hahn and Hauschka's “Draw a Map”. Its perhaps the most completely realised audio-visual summing up of the area of music that is becoming known as post-classical: that is, music that uses the techniques and instruments of the classical tradition but is not constrained by the classical world's commercial and social strictures.Watch "Draw a Map":Hauschka, aka Volker Bertelmann, is a composer and pianist whose music has always drawn on the techno and world music played in Read more ...