pop music
graeme.thomson
A companion piece to last year’s Scratch My Back, on which Gabriel restrung classic material by the likes of Radiohead, Lou Reed and Elbow, New Blood finds the arch tinkerer dismantling some of his own greatest songs, stripping them of their rockist infrastructure (bass, guitar, drums) and rearranging them for a 46-piece orchestra.The two fundamental problems rest with the wide-ranging choice of material and the mode of reinvention: the fact that Gabriel has struggled to write anything of real magnificence for a couple of decades (hence why he’s doing this, Read more ...
matilda.battersby
After two years holed up in a Toronto retreat hiding from the fame and adulation that filled arenas for three solid years after her breakout album The Reminder went platinum, excitement has been mounting for Leslie Feist’s new recording, Metals. She has spoken about her struggle to write it after exhausting herself touring, but the 35-year-old’s new material doesn’t disappoint. It is rockier, more melancholy and doesn’t have the same commercial charm as her last record - which is probably quite deliberate.The Reminder was full of chirpy songs with lovelorn refrains and breathlessly whispered Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The 14th album from Vince Clarke and Andy Bell is supposed to herald a change, or so we are told by their people. Have they gone Goth? Have they discovered dubstep? Like heck. The only thing that has changed appears to be Andy Bell's eerily robotic face. Don't be fooled by the title. There is nothing futuristic about the nine songs here. There isn't even a cameo on backing vocals from Raymond Baxter, the presenter of the BBC series that got to their title first.But before you start demanding a refund, have a listen. Tomorrow's World is classic handbag electro with knobs on. From the yearning Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
First off Spank Rock, has nailed the second best album title of the year. It’s sweary, bleeds punk attitude and nails a point - rather than the usual focus-grouped opaquely resonant crap bands come up with (best album title of 2011, by the way: Mogwai’s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will – brilliant!).Secondly Baltimore MC Naem Juwan once again lives up to the hype, not easy to do when Tweet-trending futuroid numpties have been frothing over him non-stop for the five years since his debut album made them cream their jeans. Spank Rock brought a broken computer to the hip hop party in 2006 Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Friday 9th SeptemberA ferry adds to the fun. It may seem rather childish but the fact you have to take a ferry to the Isle of Wight makes the whole Bestival experience seem more of an adventure. Sitting on the open air deck with my youngest brother Enrico, the wind tempered by a warm, bright sun, and a bottle of cider passing between us, the only perturbing issue is the amount of wax jackets making the journey to the festival, Barbours and the like. When did the wax jacket become acceptable? When I were a lad they were only worn by Sloanes and men with shotguns Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Proximity Effect’s two opening cuts set the stall. Glitchiness gives way to a descending, sad, drifting melody on “The Beginning of the End”. “More Than You” is an upbeat, poppy, Tango in the Night Fleetwood Mac refracted through a chilly Nordic musical sensibility. Lovely.Laki Mera's core members are vocalist/guitarist Laura Donnelly and the Italian composer/instrumentalist/producer Andrea Gobbi. Based in Glasgow, where they met, they formed the band in 2004. Their first album, Clutter, caused a minor stir as it first surfaced as a pay-what-you-fancy download in late 2007. A physical Read more ...
joe.muggs
When I lived in Brighton in the mid-Nineties, a certain type was 10 a penny. Young, stoned, middle-class buskers, acoustic guitar strummers who were au fait with hip hop and able to improvise endless streams of witty wordplay and often to make human beatbox rhythms. They tended to have an innate sense that what they were doing was a novelty act, though, and as if embarrassed about adopting the tropes of rap for their whimsical amusements they rarely pursued it as more than a cabaret act – although you can hear echoes of what they did in certain bands of the time such as Gomez.Ed Sheeran is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Better him than Black Eyed Peas, eh? Will.I.Am never came up with a line like, "Just sittin' here chillin' in the Batcave/ Whilst listening to Nick Cave/ Last night was a sick rave". In fact, that lively sliver of channel-hopping doggerel pretty much sums up Example. His lyricism has both cheese and cheek but is undeniably compulsive, laced with bubblegum hedonism. As for the music backing him, it's 21st-century electronic homogeny run riot - bangin' Euro-trance, dubstep, drum and bass, a dash of hip hop, soft-rock tropes, no shortage of melodies and big breakdowns.Half-listened to, Playing Read more ...
hilary.whitney
Pauline Black, the lead singer of 2-Tone band The Selecter, was born in 1953 to an Anglo-Jewish mother and Nigerian father and was adopted as a baby by a white working-class couple from Essex, who refused to acknowledge she was black. However, by adolescence she was determined to define herself as society saw her and changed her surname to Black by deed poll when she was in her twenties.During her early career with The Selecter, Black toured alongside fellow 2-Tone bands The Specials and Madness, determined to spread a multicultural musical message through the band's fusion of ska, reggae and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although sadness currently cloaks Norway, the release of Razika’s joyful debut album might raise a few spirits. From Bergen, this all-female four-piece are school friends jointly born in 1991, hence part of the album title. Program 91 is a ska-inflected romp that would’ve been a snug fit for Rough Trade in the early Eighties. Razika weren’t even born then. The other half of the album’s title is inspired by fellow Bergen band Program 81, a ska-inflected new wave outfit formed in 1981. Razika – coined as band-speak for a cute boy - clearly aren’t shy about revealing their inspirations, Read more ...
howard.male
While obviously not as seismic a Top of the Pops moment as Ziggy singing “Starman”, the almost contemporaneous appearance of the flat-capped Gilbert O’Sullivan hunched over his piano as if it were a dying coal fire certainly stuck in my memory as clearly as Bowie’s androgynous space-age carrot-top. Although the flat cap was quickly ditched in favour of casual knitwear and even a hairy chest phase (see pic below), today’s 64-year-old Mr O’Sullivan feels that his fate in the shape of his image was sealed all those decades ago, and he’s been fighting ever since to transcend it.Although a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In a black dress, Caro Emerald is playing her UK debut. Behind her, an eight-piece band is squeezed onto the Jazz Café’s small stage. Snappy and pin sharp, they’re in black suits, white shirts and black ties. Except the guitarist, who’s jacket-free. Three brass players are ranged behind music stands. Nothing is overstated. Emerald races through her jazz-grounded pop, the rumba-ish “A Night Like This” ending a set that filters filmic swing through a current pop sensibility.By this time last year - to the week - Caro Emerald’s Deleted Scenes From the Cutting Room Floor had been at the top of Read more ...