New music
Thomas H. Green
Kooky ladies are very much of the moment, an ongoing moment, actually - the last couple of years, to be precise - but they seem to be with us to stay which is surely a good thing, especially in the playground. Better them than unreconstructed pole-dancing, as promulgated by the Pussycat Dolls et al. Then there’s Gaga, of course, who’s a lot of both. Now the kook generation, from Ellie Goulding to Paloma Faith, have to decide (once they've steered clear of wannabe-Mariah X Factor tedium) what ratio of gay club 3am hard house stomp to inject into their cod-Kate Bush freakery.Marina Diamandis Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Gravenhurst is Nick Talbot, a Bristolian multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter who recently completed his sixth album, The Ghost in Daylight. Ahead of its release on Warp Records next week theartsdesk premieres the unsettling film made for its lead single “The Prize”. Directed by Jenny Coan, Talbot says the video “suggests a journey towards an unknown destination”.The pairing of Gravenshurst with Coan makes sense. Both a film archive curator and filmmaker, the director has worked with Damien Hirst, Adam Curtis, Julian Temple and the Victoria & Albert Museum to make films Read more ...
theartsdesk
Southbank Centre’s current season has included weekends devoted to three contemporary giants: Pierre Boulez, Conlon Nancarrow and George Benjamin. But it closes with a festival devoted to not to one contemporary composer but 20. The New Music 20x12 weekend, initiated by the PRS for Music Foundation, is a Olympic celebration of the range and diversity of new British composition. Indeed, the only thing all 20 pieces will have in common is that – you’ve guessed it - they will last 12 minutes.Performances will take place all over the Southbank Centre, and 14 of them will be freeSome of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Some say that since Gomez beat Pulp to win 1998’s Mercury award, their progress has been a little disappointing. After two or three albums their infectious frazzled blues became replaced by anodyne AOR, until eventually all their wild innocence had gone. Maybe it was too much too early, or maybe because half of them migrated to the States. Either way, their last two offerings have felt like they're simply pandering to safe suburban tastes. Last night’s concert, however, was less about last year’s Whatever’s on Your Mind than the band's 15th anniversary. And, if Gomez have become increasingly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title isn’t far from literal. Adventures in Your Own Backyard was recorded in Patrick Watson’s Montréal apartment. Thankfully for his neighbours, despite a song called “Noisy Sunday”, it’s a restrained album where even the percussion crescendos wouldn’t have rattled windows – too much. It’s also, recognisably, a Patrick Watson album.Four albums in, it remains difficult to know how to react to Patrick Watson, the person and his eponymous band. As with Andrew Bird, Antony and the Johnsons still loom large over proceedings. Watson’s tremulous, high-register voice, the chamber-like Read more ...
theartsdesk
T Rex: Electric Warrior 40th Anniversary Special EditionHoward MaleThe most blinkered and subjective music fan is the teenager. But is it my teenage self (barely mediated by my adult self) informing you that this T Rex album from 1972 is the most perfect collection of fey cosmic ballads and sexy pop/rock that there has ever, ever been? I’d like to think not. You see the thing is, even today, as soon as the earthy unearthly “Mambo Sun” fills the room with its sultry, ineffable presence, I’m thinking what I always think when I play Electric Warrior: this sinuous, fey, funky, majestic, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Before we begin, a confession: despite my overwhelming fondness for sensitive male singer-songwriter types, Rufus Wainwright and I have never gotten on. I recognise that famous rich, luscious voice as an exquisite instrument in its own right yet find the songs it performs too theatrical to really warm to.It may be “the most pop album I’ve ever made” in Wainwright’s own words, but despite a big name production credit from Mark Ronson Out of the Game doesn’t come across as an album that’s trying for some sideways sidle into the mainstream. “I’m looking for something that can’t be found on the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Santigold – Philadelphia singer Santi White - does not neatly fit into any stereotype of the modern female pop star. In fashion photographer Jason Schmidt’s multiple cover images she is both an Amazonian warrior guard and a waistcoat clad masculine business overlord, and on record she adopts many more personas, but none of them are submissive or porno-chic sexual. Instead, Santigold makes stomping proud, shout-pop, chanty anthems that sit midway between early Eighties chart-toppers and utterly modern post-R&B US dance, of the Beyoncé ilk.With a production team that includes DJs such Boyz Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It became clear, midway through support act Toddla T that this was going to be a bit special. With a view from the front of the first tier balcony, I could see the melee below and the two balconies above. The Shepherd’s Bush Empire is a gorgeous 109 year old theatre that’s been a music hall and BBC studio in its time but no-one was sitting down tonight, far from it. Those on the upper tiers were leaning forward over the balconies, whooping and waving their arms, everyone everywhere seemed to be moving. I turned to my companion and ventured, “This is a bit like a rave.” Within a short time I Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Levon Helm, who died yesterday from cancer at the age of 71, was not only the drummer in The Band, one of the load-bearing beams of American roots rock. He was also an astonishingly soulful singer, whether as lead or harmony, with a voice that seemed to imbue everything he sang with an unfussy yet absolute truth, as inescapable and essential as the earth.Helm’s distinctive crook-backed playing style and immersed singing, reaching up from his drum stool toward the microphone like a wolf howling at the moon, were marks of a true one-off.Born in Elaine, Arkansas, in 1940, Helm brought the sounds Read more ...