folk music
Barney Harsent
“Harry's new album is F*CKING INSANE!” tweeted Father John Misty recently, setting the expectation bar very high for a collection that, sources close to the former One Direction member had indicated, would be “deeply personal” (or, at least, as deeply personal as a Grammy-winning songwriting team would allow). Then, with the release of lead single “Sign of the Times” came comparisons to Pink Floyd and David Bowie. Not an overlong Robbie Williams piano ballad sung by someone with decent range, then? No. Pink Floyd. And Bowie.The comparisons and preposterous hyperbole seem stranger still on the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Flawlessly uniting atmosphere and melody is challenging. Especially so when creating music is approached unconventionally and with the desire to be individual. Having set her bar high, Juana Molina triumphs on all counts, again proving herself as a virtuoso artist who executes her vision with enviable assurance.Halo is the Argentinian musical witch’s – the press release describes her as a “good witch”, which, considering her unearthliness, seems fair – seventh album, the follow-up to 2013’s WED 21. Molina edited, produced, programmed, recorded and played almost everything. Yet it does not Read more ...
Barney Harsent
We live in a time of particularly polarised opinion, and Paul Weller remains a divisive figure. To some he’s the Changing Man, the Modfather, the Most Modernest Modernist that ever was. To others, however, he’s come to represent the very chromosome that turns perfectly good songwriting into "dadrock" and creates the sort of tuneful terrain on which Kasabian can flourish.While I’m not here to defend Kasabian, there’s a clear case to be made for Paul Weller. Forgetting for a moment the breadth of musical ambition he displayed in the Jam and Style Council years, recent(ish) albums have seen a Read more ...
Liz Thomson
From Muswell Hillbilly to Beverly Hillbilly, Ray Davies – Sir Ray – has long been infatuated with America and it must have been a great disappointment when the Kinks were banned from touring there in the mid-1960s. Then in the 1970s and Eighties they were reborn as a stadium rock band, criss-crossing the States and losing their audience back home.These days, Davies is a much-loved figure, drawing crowds at venues large and small, the power chords of those Sixties anthems recognisable to all and his quiet observational songs cheered to the echo. The centrality of the Kinks to popular music Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Sharon Shannon’s not yet 50 – and she’s been performing for more than 40 years, joining a band at home in County Clare when she was eight and touring the US with them at 14. Since then she’s worked with an impressive array of artists, from the Waterboys through Steve Earle to Nigel Kennedy. Arguably, it was The Woman’s Heart project (1992), showcasing Irish folk musicians which included Mary Black and Maura O’Connell, that propelled Shannon to international success.Sacred Earth, her first studio album in three years, encompasses what Leonard Bernstein called “the infinite variety of music”. Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
This is a well-travelled Winter’s Tale. Declan Donnellan has long been a director who's as much at home abroad as he is in the UK, and with co-production support here coming pronouncedly from Europe (there's American backing, too), Cheek by Jowl have made it abundantly clear where they stand on the issue of the day. Their version of Shakespeare's greatest romance reaches the Barbican’s Silk Street Theatre after a frenetic touring schedule that began in Paris more than a year ago, with further voyages beckoning. When it comes to travelling light, Nick Ormerod’s spare design must have been of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
One thing was very clear at Wednesday night’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall – at the moment at least, Scotland has something of a monopoly when it comes to folk music talent. While Desert Island Discs suggests the current First Minister’s tastes are rather more commercial than those of her predecessor in the post, if push comes to shove, maybe folk music will be a bargaining chip in the discussions over independence.That’s not to say there wasn’t talent also from south of the border, or from across the Irish Sea (Daoirí Farrell picked up two baubles), or from America Read more ...
Liz Thomson
As Imelda May releases her fifth CD, it can’t but help that Bob Dylan has come out as a fan – it was, she wrote, "like being kissed by Apollo himself". No doubt his buddy T Bone Burnett passed him a copy of the album, for he produced it in Los Angeles, where it was recorded over seven days, with guest appearances from guitarist Jeff Beck and pianist and band leader Jools Holland, on whose TV shows May has guested several times.Life. Love. Flesh. Blood is the fifth studio outing for the girl from Dublin’s Liberties, and it's full of emotion, polished and stylised. May has performed with Read more ...
Liz Thomson
The only British gig in Josh Ritter’s so-called work-in-progress tour took place in the somewhat unlikely venue of St Stephen’s Church, Shepherd’s Bush, a rather fine example of gothic revival style. It’s almost opposite Bush Hall, which would have been a more logical venue: an altar was not perhaps the most obvious setting for the Idaho-born alt folkie though the acoustics were splendid.But there Ritter stood, pulpit to his right, flying-eagle lectern (the symbol of St John the Evangelist) to his left. The numbers of last Sunday’s hymns were still on display. Leonard Cohen liked to mix sex Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Mention the name “Barbara Dickson” and everyone remembers “I Know Him so Well”, the duet with Elaine Paige which hit the top spot in 1985, the era of big hair, shoulders pads and dry ice. That song didn’t feature in Dickson’s concert at Union Chapel, but those who came to hear her other top 20 hits – “Answer Me”, “Caravans” and “January February” – weren’t disappointed. The last was the appropriate opener on a frigid February eve, but like everything she played, it was totally reinvented.Quite deservedly, Dickson has enjoyed considerable commercial success and won awards for her acting (“Tell Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The keeper on Burning the Threshold is “Around the Axis”, a glistening, three-minute instrumental rooted in the finger-picking of Davy Graham’s classic 1961 arrangement of “Anji”. Building from its inspiration, “Around the Axis” deftly interweaves three guitars, suggesting where Graham and other contemporary solo stylists such as Bert Jansch may have gone early on if they had not been lone instrumentalists. It also suggests one aspect of where Pentangle were at in 1969 and a familiarity with the 1966 Bert Jansch/John Renbourn album Bert and John.Burning the Threshold though is not entirely an Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The creative partnership between Ed Harcourt and Martha Wainwright is an intriguing one. He is an out and out showman, full of stage presence, bravado and tinged with thespiness. She is an introverted, quirky creative, flanked by the comfort of a full band. But there's no doubting that together they make beautiful music.Their songs, whether independent or duet, trip through the lyrical poetry of tender ballads, rousing guitar riffs, cloudy folk and abstract punk tunes with a touch of vintage jazz. Bathed in the soft, warm lights and before an intimate audience at the Roundhouse, the Read more ...