pop music
Kieron Tyler
“Don’t pull your pants before I go down… Like the shotgun, I need an outcome, I'm your prostitute, you gonna get some”. The lyrics of “Get Some”, the first single from globetrotting Swedish popster Lykke Li’s second album, are unforgettable. The album itself, Wounded Rhymes, is pretty unforgettable too.Her first album, 2008’s Youth Novels, was great – quirky, electro-assisted rhythmic pop with wee hints of Toyah. But Wounded Rhymes is something else. What seemed tame is now wild, unleashed, closer to her whirlwind live persona. She’s said that the close-to two years of touring after Youth Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There is a certain kind of Northern European songcraft that's difficult for we genre-crazed music journo sorts to categorise. The active components are a musical stew of late-night cabaret blues, oddball jazz-classical instrumentation, a smidgeon of Jacques Brel flavour, surreal lyricism and a quavering soprano female voice. At the forefront of this most miniscule of micro-genres would be Lonely Drifter Karen and Clare and the Reasons (although the latter hails from New York). Whatever we might call it, it's the polar opposite of rock'n'roll, it's often beautiful, and we can now add Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There's been a lot of waffle lately about rock'n'roll being dead. This is down to mainstream radio turning its back on guitar music in favour of a stew of electro-pop and R&B, and the fact that just three spots in the Top 100 UK bestselling singles (ie downloads) of 2010 were held by rock songs (for the record, Journey's "Don't Stop Believing", Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" and "Dog Days are Over" by Florence + the Machine). Whenever this sort of media babble starts, it's time to run for cover because there's undoubtedly another tedious wave of guitar bands waiting gleefully in the wings. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
To mark the release of their new single "Dilly" theartsdesk has limited-edition box sets of Band of Horses album Infinite Arms to give away. The box sets have a CD version, a vinyl version and artwork unique to the set. All potential winners have to do is to answer the four questions below, and just to make it easy the answers will be found by following the embedded links.
Band of Horses' latest album is called Infinite Arms, but what is the first song on the album?
Band of Horses' lead singer Ben Bridwell is sometimes compared to Neil Young. What was the title of the last Neil Young album? Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A lot of hum and crackle about hypnagogic pop has passed through the ether in the last 18 months, much of it concerned with Toro Y Moi. Coined for a small raft of mainly American musicians that recast half-remembered pop from their youths, the hypnagogic aura is misty, midway between awake and asleep, and draws from soul like Curtis Mayfield or even Hall and Oates, as well as shiny Eighties cocaine-blasted pop. In America, chillwave covers it too. A lo-fi refit of Don Henley's “Boys of Summer” filtered through sacks of sand and then underpinned with some funk would fit the bill.In other eras Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two Roxy Musics took to the stage at the O2. One the art-rock retro-futurist outfit that redefined Seventies pop from 1971 to 1976, the other the airbrushed high-sheen machine of 1979 to 1982. They weren’t a comfortable fit, but this by turns perplexing and wonderful show offered more than enough evidence for what a weird, inspirational and wilful band Roxy Music were and are.The final concert on the seven-date For Your Pleasure tour, this first jaunt round the UK in over 10 years coincided with the band’s 40th anniversary. Taking its billing from the band’s second album was telling – it was Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Vanessa Paradis is a card-carrying icon, but for us Brits the reason why is hard to define. After the hyper-cute “Joe le taxi” hit the charts in 1987 when she was 14, Paradis didn’t carve a musical career here. Being the partner of Johnny Depp is her usual route into the press. As an actress, she attracts attention when her films get a British release. Last night was a rare chance to see whether her music could stand on its own, and make her more than a cipher.In France, she’s not wildly prolific musically: she’s issued 10 albums, the first in 1988. But four were live sets and one a best-of. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It seems to me that Esben and the Witch would like to perform in absolute darkness. Or perhaps in silhouette behind a screen like an oriental shadowplay. Such a theatrical device might even suit their dark, menacing music. Instead, two of the three band members have to make do with a curtain of hair between themselves and the audience. Young and shy, they deliver their moody, occasionally explosive music with low-key confidence and, in fact, their slight awkwardness in front of a crowd only enhances the edginess of the atmospherics.Outside, the Brighton night is aptly overcome with mist which Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
James Blake's "Limit to Your Love" was a bolt out of the blue at the end of last year, perhaps even a quantum leap in soul'n'bass culture in the same way that Massive Attack or Roni Size once were. This fact was swiftly acknowledged in various New Face of 2011 polls which Blake started cropping up in.The 22-year-old from Enfield had quietly built a respectable reputation with some of dubstep's deepest heads (such as Ramadanman and Mount Kimbie) but his way with a keyboard on "Limit to Your Love" had a Spartan Classicism that was strikingly stark, different and effective, particularly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bleu Venise might be recorded in LA with figures familiar from Joni Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux and Melody Gardot albums, but this French music takes from the Anglophone world without sacrificing its identity. Daphné’s Bleu Venise is modern, literate, chanson-based pop.Daphné’s break came in 2003 after she met Benjamin Biolay, France’s all-purpose and ubiquitous musical mover and shaker. He also kick-started the career of Keren Ann. But Biolay casts no shadows; his collaborators and protégés move on and flourish without him. Unlike Keren Ann and despite previous collaborations with The Divine Read more ...
Russ Coffey
P J Harvey has been shouty, and she has been tremulous. She has crunched guitars and caressed pianos. She has explored almost every emotion experienced on an ever-evolving musical journey. But on Let England Shake, her first solo album for almost four years, she’s turned away from the world within to give her take on the island on which she lives. And this bittersweet reflection feels like the culmination of everything she's been before.There’s nothing as radio-friendly here as 2000’s "Good Fortune", but it’s still her most immediate and accessible album yet. And that’s down to the beauty of Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
A midwinter night’s dream at the Barbican. Those who like their pop music performed by chaps with jeans, preferably gazing at their shoes, and are attached to certain ideas of authenticity would have run screaming for the exit. The Irrepressibles were pop as icy spectacle, as dizzying melodrama, while Gabby Young & Other Animals were raiding the musical dressing-up box and emerging with bits of French chanson, German cabaret and slinky tangos, and having a ball doing it.Gabby Young’s band created their own party atmosphere and invited the audience along. Their brand of recession chic Read more ...