pop music
Thomas H. Green
The first of two December round-ups from theartsdesk on Vinyl runs the gamut from folk-tronic oddness to Seventies heavy rock to avant-jazz to The Beatles, as well as much else. All musical life is here... except the crap stuff. So dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHSimo Cell Yes.DJ (TEMƎT)The latest from French producer Simo Cell is a bass-boomin’ post-trap six tracker that doesn’t play it straight at all. These are the kinds of tunes that should be heard on a giant sound system so that the earth itself rumbles. The enormous head-annihilating spacious tech-dub of “Farts”, a highlight, sits easily Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Signs of irrevocable change materialised in December 1965. On Wednesday the 8th, a new band named The 13th Floor Elevators debuted live at The Jade Room in Austin, Texas. Band members prepared for the experience by taking LSD in the run-up to the booking. Within a couple of weeks, they had a business card describing them as playing “psychedelic rock.”Three days later, on the 11th, another new band was seen by a paying audience for the first time. The Velvet Underground played in a support slot at Summit High School in New Jersey. Two numbers in their set were titled “Heroin” and “Venus in Read more ...
joe.muggs
Alejandra Ghersi – Arca – is one of the most influential musicians on the planet in the last decade. Even aside from working with huge names like Björk and Kanye West, her ultra-detailed, high drama, electronic abstractions have set the pace for a legion of artists from very underground to ultra-pop. And the combination of mind-bending textural shifting in her sound, outré performance and collaborations with visual artists like the master mutants Jesse Kanda has created an archetype (Arca-type?) for a generation of queer and gender non-conforming artists who find analogies for transformation Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A persistent moan of this writer in recent years, about gigs attended by those his own age (54) and up, is that, however good the band is, the audience are stationary, staring, semi-catatonic. They don’t twitch or move, facing stage-wards earnestly, silent, as if watching Chekov at the theatre. Their joy, if it exists, is internalised, unreleased. Dancing something forgotten long ago. Such gigs are flat, disappointing, like the airless, staid classical concerts I was taken to as a boy, contemplative and half-asleep. It is, then, a blissful surprise to find Eighties synth-pop outfit OMD’s Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There is unquestionably a more mellow side to the Jesus and Mary Chain these days, even when reviving their most ferocious glories from the past. Prior to launching this two-halved set, comprising their 1987 classic Darklands to begin with and a mixture of singles, B-sides and obscurities for after, vocalist Jim Reid took time out to politely explain the format.He even mentioned that the fivesome would be having a cup of tea between the two portions, suggesting a surprising tranquillity. Yet the following 90 minutes was, at its best, a bracing, jarring reminder of the power of the East Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Amid the spume of insults at the close of the song “The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle” by Malcolm McLaren’s Rotten-less, end-game version of the Sex Pistols, Rod Stewart is a prime target. Sandwiched between abuse for David Bowie and Elton John, Rod is accused of having “a luggage label tied to his tonsils”. It’s hardly a cutting verbal blow but the point is he’s amongst those the Pistols were supposedly rendering irrelevant. Over four decades later, though, his musical output remains relatively prolific and his albums massive hits. This new one will be. A terrifying thought as it contains many Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Damon Albarn’s second solo album in a career otherwise defined by open-hearted collaboration confirms he sees operating under his own name as a chance for melancholic introspection. The deliberate austerity of its predecessor, Everyday Robots (2014), was shown when accompanying, full-band gigs revealed the bright pop song finery beneath the album’s bleak camouflage. Where others go solo to satisfy band-cramped egos, solo Damon is a place of anticlimax and indirection, where his gift for melody is befogged and hazy.The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows began as an orchestral Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any compilation with a track credited to “Unknown Artist” is always going to entice, especially when it’s one which goes the full way by digging into original master tapes to find the best audio sources and previously unearthed nuggets. In this case, it’s not known who recorded “To Make a Lie”, a dark, menacing cut where a disembodied voice intones about the threat of a giant willow tree (“it’s coming!”), evil, pain and walking into eternity over a doomy organ, spiralling guitar and draggy drums. As it ends – a female scream. Bad trip vibes.“To Make a Lie” was found in the archives associated Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s been almost 10 years since Bangles’ front woman Susanna Hoffs has released any original tunes, preferring instead to go for unexpected songs by reasonably well-known artists.This is a pity, as she’s had a hand in writing more than a few cracking tracks over the years – “Hero Takes a Fall” and “Dover Beach” from the Bangles’ first album All Over the Place being particularly notable examples. Still, if the muse isn’t giving up the goods, improbable cover versions is as good a way to go as any.So it is with her latest solo album, Bright Lights, which features reinterpretations of songs by ( Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Immortality is reserved for monotheistic religions and Marvel superheroes, but in the material world, we also know Abba’s songs are ageless and will not die. After all, they have their Abbatars; we have our abattoirs.Their songs from the Seventies stand as the finest examples of 20th century European sacred music in the popular tradition. Their combination of profound melancholy and joyous uplift reveals itself in song after song. As the decades go by, the power of those uplifting songs of yearning and sadness grows more potent, as if they mean more to you the further away you are from the Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It may go against rock n’ roll cliché, but occasionally there is merit to good time keeping for a band. Lucia and the Best Boys saw their support slot in their home town of Glasgow reach an ignominious ending when they were cut off a song early, vocalist Lucia Fairfull’s chat having seen the glam synth pop group go over their allocated slot.It was an announcement greeted with some derision from those gathered there, but seemed a fitting climax to a rather stop-start showcase. Although Fairfull has a strong voice, their dancefloor friendly tunes only rarely provided a suitably catchy backing. Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Wes Anderson and Jarvis Cocker do 1960s French pop – this frothy confection couldn’t be any more “art school” if it were smoking a gauloise in a black polo-neck. Truly, what a match made on the Eurostar! For one so thoroughly Sheffield born-and-bred, Mr Cocker has oodles of French chic (plus a French ex-wife and Paris-based son). He nails yé-yé, of course, but you can imagine he was weaned on the genre.It all started with his cover of the 1965 Christophe hit “Aline” made for Wes Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch (Jarvis told We Present recently that the director actually guided Read more ...