rock
Cheri Amour
Maybe you’ve heard the Native American parable about the two wolves. An old Cherokee’s grandson is grappling with internal tensions; self-hatred and self-aggrandising. For Phoebe Bridgers, one-third of indie supergroup boygenius (usually styled with no initial capital letter), this analogy sits at the heart of album standout ‘Not Strong Enough’. In it, the trio, completed by Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, let out the divine line “Always an angel / Never a god,” adding a wry smile to the delivery.Subverting male hero worship is one of the (many) things that’s so refreshingly brilliant about a Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s something charmingly unassuming and humble about The Zombies. Nowadays their 1968 second album Odyssey and Oracle regularly figures in all time greatest albums lists, but it was a flop at the time and its reputation grew through a gradually snowballing cult status, and the band split soon after its release. Most of their existence, in fact, has been in this century, with Rod Argent and Colin Blundstone reviving the name in 2004 and staunchly putting in the legwork on the revival rock circuit ever since. If you ever see them talk, even now at knocking on 80, they are just seemingly Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the church of Mulvey. The sold-out venue is packed with a svelte crowd, mostly ranging in age between about 30 and 45. Nick Mulvey is playing a new number which has an air of lockdown-inspiration about it, with its lines about “missing every one of you” and “feeling grace in solitude”. The audience may not know the song, but they’re still in thrall, transported, a good few with eyes closed, hands reaching upwards as in evangelical service, swaying from side-to-side. One dark-bearded man and his guitar are held in esteem beyond the usual fandom.Mulvey, long-ago in Portico Quartet, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s a disconnect on the third album by Brighton rockers Black Honey. The music is rousing post-grunge indie rock, tuneful, full of vim, but the lyrics speak of someone deeply troubled. The mood is, perhaps, best summed up by “Rock Bottom” which states, “Rock bottom – but the floor keeps dropping.” The whole album is mired in similar mind-strife.Singer Izzy Bee Phillips has said as much of the incongruously named A Fistful of Peaches, stating, “Most of this record is me trying to figure out where the line is between normal mental health and when you’re having breakdowns every day that then Read more ...
joe.muggs
U2 are better than their many critics make out. Their Stakhanovite work ethic in creating huge sonics, not-a-bolt-out-of-place songwriting and stagecraft that could reach every corner of the biggest venues long before the days of giant LED screens made them the biggest band in the world with good reason. Bono Vox’s “Marmite personality” was also a big part of that: it pretty much requires a messiah complex to work that hard to reach that many people. U2 are also worse than many of their defenders will admit. As Bono’s Great Statesman act became his defining facet, it sucked Read more ...
mark.kidel
Turkish traditional music lends itself for marriages with other genres, not least rock and jazz: something about rock’s deep roots in African trance music and Turkey’s soul connection to the shamanic music of Central Asia.Although at times, the music of Islandman and his friends evokes Santana and Weather Report, this isn’t so much fusion as a reconciliation of musical streams that reach back to common archaic forms in which music is a powerful means of healing. The album brings together a group of excellent musicians: Muhlis Berberoğlu plays various members of the saz family with a regard Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mille Petrozza is roaring into the mic, teeth gritted, black hair flailing. Behind his growl-screeching a triumphant martial riff is holding the “tune” and behind that, never-ceasing drum beats, an exercise in pure velocity.“The failed, the outcasts, the sagacious and wise will form a bond, impeccable art crafted through aeons of time,” thunders Petrozza, in a rare popular musical use of the word “sagacious”. “Hail to the Hordes” runs the chorus to the 2017 song, and writhing before Kreator, there they are, the hordes, a mass of denim and leather and skin, buffeting around the mosh-pit like Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It is a sign of Ladytron’s longevity and relevance that their support acts are now performers clearly inspired by the quartet. Elisabeth Elektra, here picked for opening the night in her home city, may not have the icy cool of the evening’s headliners, but the lineage of her buoyantly loud electro pop was clear.At its best, she showcased a wickedly clear groove, at worst her vocal was submerged by the live drummer pounding away behind her. However it was a lively, enjoyable start to affairs.That noise, though, was merely a light blow compared to the hammering assault when Ladytron themselves Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The booklet coming with The Albums 1974-76 notes Johnny Rotten saw Heavy Metal Kids live and that the Sex Pistol “ripped off” their frontman Gary Holton. It's an assertion in keeping with a default option where the HMKs are referred to as a precursor band to punk – one helping to lay the table for it.This three-CD clamshell set offers a chance to dig into where the band fit in. Elsewhere in the booklet's text, The Damned's Brian James is quoted saying Holton and Co were “ahead of their time.” HMK’s keyboard player Danny Peyronel declares “we were one of the first bands to have the term Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Jessica Winter is clearly a hardy soul. The Portsmouth singer made a point of shedding her jacket and top as her support set went on, a bold choice given the typically unpredictable Glasgow weather was serving up freezing snow outside at the time.It was hard to decipher if her music was as adventurous, as it shifted from dance heavy bangers to melodramatic pop that thrived on theatrical gestures and movement, but was hindered by choppy sound that left her vocal inaudible entirely for one number. She did, however, handle proceedings with a flair that bodes well.There were moments when Lucia Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This double album takes Van Morrison back to one of his early muses – Skiffle and its repertoire, that precursor to the rock'n'roll years that took hold of Britain in the 1950s, having percolated across the USA through the first half of the century, combining folk, blues, country, bluegrass and jazz into one steaming head of home-brewed folk, hopped up on washboards, jugs, washtub bass and the like.It was arguably the first flame of the fire that consumed the music world of the 1960s as Skiffle-addicted teens like Van grew into leaders of the Sixties beat boom and the subsequent invasion of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six is the rags-to-riches-to-wreckage story of the titular Seventies rock band, supposedly somewhat based on Fleetwood Mac. Their journey from their fashion-defying hometown of Pittsburgh to Los Angeles and thence the world follows a well-worn trail carved by countless aspiring rockers, and doesn’t do it quite interestingly enough to justify its 10-episode length.Much of the gossip about the show has centred on Riley Keough’s performance as Daisy Jones, whom we first encounter as a rather dithery apprentice singer- Read more ...