pop music
Russ Coffey
His daughter may be Hannah Montana and he may have set country music sales records but, worldwide, Billy Ray Cyrus will never escape his mega-hit “Achy Breaky Heart”. Although that was a novelty record, it epitomised everything people find preposterous about America’s red states. Which is why, outside of America’s heartlands, most people find it difficult to take Cyrus seriously. It's something he finds very frustrating. I’m American is Cyrus’s “patriot” album. It’s all about troops and home and stars and stripes. It’s full girls left behind, and parents’ war records. Just the Read more ...
joe.muggs
“It's like an advert for American Apparel,” said my companion a song into the set – and she had a point. The elegantly poised electropop of Little Dragon is so sharp, so cool, so impeccably internationalist in its outlook and presentation that, taken in small doses, it would be perfect for any brand targeted at affluent hipsters. But while their antics on stage, and especially those of singer Yukimi Nagano were admittedly a brand manager's dream at any given moment, over time they proved to be something much more interesting.'Pleasingly for a crowd so dressed up, they appeared extremely Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As subtlety in popular music becomes increasingly worshipped by heritage-led taste arbiters, we should relish proper shouty moron tunes. Few come more shouty and moronic than LMFAO, a Los Angeles duo named after the text abbreviation for "Laughing my fucking arse off". They comprise Berry Gordy's youngest son Skyler (AKA Skyblu) and his grandson Stefan Gordy (AKA Redfoo), renowned for goon club anthem "I'm in Miami, Bitch". They claim their second album is "more refined" - but it isn't unless your idea of refined is pole dancing to Limp Bizkit.A decade ago the hard house sound Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kew the Music - the umbrella name for a series of outdoor concerts - did not look promising upon first arrival and, indeed, for quite some time afterwards. It was clear as soon as I walked through the gates that this was a day out for monied London, not the usual gig environment. Before the stage, in front of Kew Gardens' Victorian Temperate House, a large section of grass had been sealed off for those with pre-booked picnicking space and everywhere about people sat with hampers swigging half bottles of Veuve Clicquot and using cocktail sticks to pluck exotic varities of marinated Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The musical identity of Midlands town Stourbridge is largely defined by Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wonder Stuff, a trio that charted with varying degrees of wackiness in the late Eighties to mid-Nineties. The Voluntary Butler Scheme, the recording identity of fellow Stourbridgian Rob Jones, shares their leaning towards wackiness, but it’s more surreal, less surface. He’s also way more interesting musically. Second album The Grandad Galaxy is a musical rummage through a jumble-sale mind.Jones is closer to Davyhulme absurdist Jim Noir than any of his local predecessors. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It’s not so much cultural differences that have hindered Death Cab for Cutie’s UK profile, it’s more the difficulty of making a name when “there just couldn’t be less scandal surrounding the band”. Or so guitarist Chris Walla feels. In the States their beautiful, emotionally muted music goes platinum and is featured in huge shows like the OC. But just as US audiences were hard to persuade of the charms of Pulp or Suede, so Death Cab’s strangely moving introspection has been here, by and large, niche. You’d never have known it, though, from the legions of fashionably dressed devotees at the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
French interpreters Nouvelle Vague have a seemingly unsustainable path. Reinterpreting Anglo songs of the post-punk and new wave eras in unlikely semi-easy-listening settings (bossa nova, reggae, country and bluegrass) would appear to bring diminishing returns. But on their last album, 2009’s 3, they went gently Gallic, covering “Ça plane pour moi”, originally by Belgium’s Plastic Bertrand. Fourth time out, it’s all Francophone.Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux’s first three Nouvelle Vague albums mainly featured lesser-known female Franco singers (notably Camille and Mélanie Pain – some original Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Well, it pains me to say it, but if there has to be a winner Morrissey edged it. Jarvis was Nadal to Mozza's Djokovic. Both match-fit after appearances at Glastonbury, both would have been invincible against anyone else. But Jarvis was still great, as compelling as ever in his suit and sloppy tie, resembling a teacher out of an old Ken Loach film as he strolled on, asked "Is everybody in?" and threw himself with frightening abandon into "Do You Remember the First Time?"From there it was a journey into a wonderful past as classic after classic flew by, from the mighty “Mile End” – which I’d Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This hugely entertaining first instalment of a three-part investigation into what makes pop songs tick took as its theme "The Ballad", perhaps the most bomb-proof of pop's traditional forms. Mind you, the programme's definition of a ballad was pretty loose. For instance, I would say Sting's "Every Breath You Take" is merely medium-paced rather than a ballad. I'd just file Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" under "Pop Song".No arguments about "Candle in the Wind" or "Everybody Hurts" though, while Jennifer Rush's "The Power of Love" is the epitome of the so-called "Power Ballad", a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Blondie took 17 years off between 1982 and 1999, and bounced back with the chart-topping single "Maria". Now, refreshed after an eight-year power nap following 2003's The Curse of Blondie, they've returned with their ninth studio album.This would have been a splendid record in 1980, a year which its snappy synth-pop flashbacks seem to want to evoke. In 2011 it's still not bad, though there's a sense that the tracks are compensating with artful studio technology for shortcomings in the writing, and perhaps in Deborah Harry's brittle vocals. Nonetheless, the disc comes roaring out of the blocks Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Thursday 23 JuneHaven’t left yet but someone sends me an email saying, "Not going to Glastonbury this year and feeling rather smug about it." What are they feeling smug about? The fact that they’re going to have a forgettable, normal weekend while this extraordinary event is going on? It is, of course, to do with ideas of rain. A lot of the pre-Glastonbury coverage focuses endlessly on rain and mud, as if home comforts are everything. When did comfort become the big cultural draw?Possibly when the average age of music journalists went from 27 to 45, or possibly when we began our techno- Read more ...
david.cheal
Paul Simon is now nearly 70 years old and as he walked onto the Hammersmith Apollo stage last night it struck me that he is beginning to look like the little old man he will eventually become: still nimble, enviably trim, but nevertheless, he was noticeably older and more fragile-looking than when I last saw him five years ago. The second thing that struck me was a certain weariness in the opening songs - a mechanical quality to the playing, and a concomitantly flat atmosphere. The opening song, “Crazy Love Vol II”, was ploddy, while “Dazzling Blue”, from his new So Beautiful or So Read more ...