pop
Barney Harsent
At a time when stepping outside your front door constitutes risky behaviour, the short, sharp, shocking tales of misspent youth from Queensland pop-punk trio The Chats are a proper tonic."Short" might be an understatement, as it goes. The debut album from singer-bassist Eamon Sandwith, drummer Matt Boggis and guitarist Josh Price’s features 14 songs, none of which tops three minutes. Half of them are well under two. It’s amazing what they can pack into a minute and a half simply by discarding everything extraneous.These songs start at a sprint, throw everything at you and then bugger off – Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Critical and commercial success haven’t gone to the head of Lewis Capaldi. The 23-year-old opened his first of two sold-out nights at Glasgow’s 14,000-capacity enormodrome – booked when he was yet to release his debut album – with a video montage poking fun of his po-faced reaction to Billie Eilish beating him to Song of the Year at the Grammys in January.Coming mere weeks after his double win at the Brit Awards, the show had the feel of a triumphant homecoming – albeit one in for which the vanquishing hero was constantly rewarding the crowd with profanity-laden gratitude. Almost exactly Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Recent politics surround the EU and nationhood, fantasies of Irish Sea bridges and trading borders more porous than limestone have revived the granular rub between Eire and Britain, and the Celtic Tiger cool of the Nineties is a history module these days. Nevertheless the creative exchange between the two nations has a long and fruitful history – our folk traditions are conjoined twins, after all, and our contemporary musical cultures part of a continual flow back and forth.Imagining Ireland, first mounted to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising back in 2016, the year of the Brexit Read more ...
joe.muggs
Grimes is hilarious. For all the grandiose conceptualism, apocalyptic visions, high tech sonic manipulation, outré costumes, modish witchery, multiple personas, arch media baiting with her billionaire boyfriend and all the rest, she is still essentially a dork. When she emerged from the weird end of the 00s online electronic music landscape where semi-serious lo-fi genres like “witch house” and “seapunk” abounded, she always seemed kind of goofy with it. And though her musical progression has been a steady accumulation of expensive-sounding production, that same drama student on acid Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As Gaz Coombes noted around the halfway point of Supergrass’s Barrowland set “the last time we were here it was to say goodbye”. That was a decade ago, when one of Britpop’s most enduring acts finally headed into the sunset. Nothing lasts forever in pop though, and here were Oxford’s finest, back onstage, and looking in fine fettle.They opened with “Caught By The Fuzz”, and it sounded as breathlessly exciting as ever, an under three minute blast of punky pop dynamism. That was a common theme throughout the set, and one that not all nostalgia tours like this can always offer, in that music Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Matt Shultz was clearly taking no chances. The Cage the Elephant frontman appeared onstage underneath a large umbrella, presumably bought to cope with the day’s deluge of rain. In the ever effervescent Shultz’s hands it was swiftly used as a prop, kickstarting a lively evening of old fashioned rock 'n’ roll.These are heady times for the Kentucky outfit, who arrived fresh from winning their second Grammy for fifth album, Social Cues. It provided the backbone of a lengthy set that suggested they have outlasted many of their contemporaries by serving up invigorating versions of classic styles, Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It might have been 24 hours after Valentine’s Day, but James McGovern still seemed to have a touch of romance in his head. At one stage during the Murder Capital’s bruising set he referenced his floral-patterned shirt as evidence that he was feeling the spirit of the previous day, and perhaps that should not surprise, for the Murder Capital are a band with plenty of heart.They are also an outfit with intelligence, both in their songs and in the clever way the Dublin fivesome structured this gig. The first half possessed intensity but mostly of the slow burning sort, a tension that you felt Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Roland Orzabal, co-founder and lead guitarist of Tears for Fears, laughs to himself often during this documentary — the latest in the BBC’s often-excellent, always-forensic Classic Albums series. “I agree, I agree, it sounds great,” says Orzabal. He’s listening to “Shout,” the band’s 1984 Billboard No. 1 hit. “There’s something about it,” he chuckles, “I believed it.” The documentary focuses on Orzabal and Curt Smith, Tears for Fears’ founders and frontmen, and the development of their album-topping record Songs From The Big Chair (1985). It tells the somewhat unlikely tale of how a cathartic Read more ...
mark.kidel
There is something deliciously normal about Tennis, the Denver husband and wife team of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley. Steeped in the best pop of a bygone age, the couple’s lyrics seem so simple and yet unpack hidden depths on repeated listening. Moore and Riley met as analytical philosophy majors - with a shared love of great and often little-known music - and they bring to their crystalline songs of love a sophistication that never gets too clever.This is their fifth album, and they never let up. As time goes by, Tennis seem to refine their art, leaving most traces of indie rock behind. Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
No matter how much the Jonas Brothers try, they can’t totally escape the mouse. Commercials for new Disney TV shows flashed up onscreen not long before the siblings took to the stage, and although the trio’s days of appearing in such fare are long gone, it offered a brief reminder of where they began. Ironically though, this was a forward thinking pop show that worked best when focused on the future, rather than indulging in nostalgia.It was also a performance that spared no expense. If the trappings were familiar, from the group appearing on a platform being lowered from the ceiling before Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Without wanting to get into what constitutes punk, we can, at least, agree that brevity is to be lauded? Right? Good, because at 26 minutes, Green Day’s 13th studio album, Father of All Motherfuckers, is a volley delivered at velocity. That’s not to say that all 10 tracks speed along at the same Ramones-esque breakneck pace however. There’s room for changes in speed and style as the pop-punk’n’roll band deliver an album high on energy and low on political outrage. Despite no shortage of source material, any fans hoping for American Idiot #2 will find something very different in store. Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The first time I heard Madonna, I was 8 years old at a school disco. Horrified parents, who came to pick us up as we jumped up and down yelling along to “Like A Virgin” in a fluorescent flurry of topknots, puffer skirts and lace gloves, subsequently lodged a formal complaint (it was a Catholic junior school) and thus, the spirit of Madonna, was borne into my story. Since those days of stonewash and crimping only one thing has remained consistent in my life – Madge’s persistent ability to re-invent herself. Now, 30 years later, I am bearing witness to a conglomeration of her identities, Read more ...