New music
howard.male
The fact of the matter is that this young, supremely talented Brazilian singer-songwriter is no great performer. But is this an issue when the music she makes is so immersive and seductive in its own right? On record, her songs are like ragged collages held together by scraps of tape. They sound like they might dissipate or disintegrate at any moment were it not for the calm authority of her voice holding everything together. This is music that exudes sophistication. But not the easily faked sophistication of smooth-as-cream bossa nova. It’s a post-modern sophistication that credits the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Sometimes I feel I’m the only one who finds Jack White’s music overrated. Although he's undeniably a prodigious axe man, I've never found his trademark raw, “underproduced” sound as convincing. That, however, was The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. Now White’s made an album just under his own name. And that begs the question of whether he has come up with a new musical manifesto. And, if so, is it any good?Anyone hoping for a substantial creative left-turn will be disappointed. Blunderbuss still pounds the stripped-down blues rock trail. It's true there are more diversions along the way, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
In a members-only bowling club, down a side street in a residential part of Glasgow I'd never visited before last night, Texan fiddle-player and songwriter Amanda Shires stood wearing the most magnificent pair of cowboy boots I had ever seen.They were a well-worn grey, decorated with the same f-shaped slots as her own instrument, and complete with giant silver buckles that made a satisfying jingle like heavy-duty sleigh bells when she stamped her feet hard enough to be her own backing track. They remind me of a shop sign I saw in Nashville once, offering "two free" when you bought one pair of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Poliça aren’t lacking support. Jay Z posted one of their videos on his blog. Prince turned up to check out their live debut. Bon Iver's Mike Noyce sings on a couple of Give You the Ghost’s tracks. For an outfit whose debut album is only just getting its UK release (it was issued in the States in February), Poliça have got the jump on most contenders. They’ve also got an added leg up by having their origins in hip Minneapolis collective Gayngs. Most importantly, Give You the Ghost is great.Like Gayngs, Poliça – Polish for policy – aren’t a band. Both are projects drawing together producers and Read more ...
Dylan Moore
The Laugharne Weekend has become a fixture in the crowded calendar of festivals that now punctuates not just high days and holidays but the whole six months that make up British Summer Time. Carving a niche for itself as a halfway house between literature and music, Laugharne’s success is built on two key factors.First, its remarkable natural location in a remote corner of Carmarthenshire, southwest Wales and the village’s associations with Dylan Thomas, whose Boathouse, writing shed and the string of local pubs with legendary stories of the poet’s drunken antics make up Laugharne’s year- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Anyone remember gabber? It was a moment in the mid-Nineties when Dutch and New York dance music went as fast and loud as it could. In retrospect it was a bizarre anomaly but achieved brief cult popularity combining puerile juvenility, punk, avant-garde experimentalism and techno in a way that’s never been repeated. It was a bloody racket but the best of it had a real venomous sting and eventually appealed to the heavy rock community as much as ravers. The same can be said of Huoratron, AKA Finnish producer Aku Raski.Raski was discovered by Last Gang Records, the label that homed fellow Read more ...