rock
Thomas H. Green
The top-selling vinyl at independent UK record shops in 2020 was Idles' latest album (closely followed by Yungblud, which is impressive, given his only came out in December!). The Top 10 is dominated by indie, rock and retro but, actually, the bigger picture is that limited runs by music in all styles are selling across the board. Our first theartsdesk on Vinyl of 2021 showcases, as ever, the enormous range of music pouring out on plastic. From Bond themes to blues rock to Afro-experimental and much more, it’s all here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHAlostmen Kologo (Strut)This album is punkin’. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Four albums in and The Pretty Reckless singer, Taylor Momsen, still feels the need to explain herself to her doubters. In a recent interview, the former actress reiterated that quitting the TV show Gossip Girl, a decade ago, was her best decision ever; music has always been her real passion, she said, and now it's become her saviour. Momsen's recent emotional struggles are laid bare on Death By Rock And Roll. The album's tracks are shot through with tragedy and grief. Two deaths, in particular, underpin the LP: Firstly, the suicide of friend-of-the-band Chris Cornell. Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The massed rock audiences which caused Dave Grohl’s old band such angst have fuelled the Foos. This tenth album was finished early in their 25th year, with a celebratory lap of 2020 festivals booked. Now these are anthems without an audience, released into a world in stasis, where communal closeness is an alien and fearful prospect.Then again, I’ve stood feet away from the band’s festival gale-force, seen the whites of Grohl’s eyes as he grins and sweats at his work, and felt indifferent to the relentless, undifferentiated uplift. Grohl’s proverbial niceness, the positivity with which he Read more ...
Guy Oddy
South London all-female post punkers, Goat Girl caused a bit of a splash with their self-titled debut album and early, belligerent tunes like “Scum” back in 2018. Now, however, is time for its follow-up and, unfortunately On All Fours is indelibly stamped with difficult second album syndrome. Sure, they take on big issues like humanity’s parasitic relationship with the Earth; sexism and the patriarchal society; social isolation; mental health issues and the short-comings of capitalism, but instead of decking themselves in warpaint and going for the jugular, like the Slits or L7 might do, they Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Their PR cannot put the band name in the header of promotional emails, as they’ll go straight to the spam bin, but Swedish punk outfit Viagra Boys have, nonetheless, become a name to contend with. It’s their wild live persona that’s put them on the map but their second album raucously – and tenderly – demonstrates they also have the range and the songs to explode into something bigger.Their sound is a Tennessee-flavoured, rock’n’rollin’ electro blues, pumped up with grubby distorted bass-end riffing and occasional Krautrock tints. Welfare Jazz pushes this stew into all sorts of shapes and Read more ...
Nick Hasted
When satire becomes redundant, all that’s left is to tell it like it is. Drive-By Truckers released The Unraveling in January 2020, but Covid couldn’t dim the relevancy and glowering power of its requiem for Trump-trampled American hopes.Patterson Hood’s high, sorrowing voice suited both the appalled “Babies in Cages” and “21st Century USA”, a sympathetic panorama of a ground-down country: “Men working hard for not enough, at best/Women working just as hard for less/They get together late at night in bars/Bang each other just like crashing cars.” Cleansing guitar thunder contributed to a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 2020, one archive release exerted a more forceful presence than any other. Live At Goose Lake August 8th 1970 caught The Stooges as they promoted their second album Fun House. The source was a previously unknown, professionally recorded tape documenting the whole album as it was played live, in its running order. Iggy Pop and the band were hard yet sloppy, tight yet rough, always blazing. Wonderful – and a reminder that musical surprises still crop up.While contemplating what’s been covered in this column over the last year, the feeling that archive releases can shift perceptions rises to Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It’s become something of an end-of-year list cliché to say that 2020 has been a great year for music despite being a catastrophic shitstorm when judged by any other metric you care to mention.“Ah!” says 2020, “but clichés are clichés because they’re true,” and sits back smugly, arms folded, conveniently forgetting that this is a cliché in itself and so leading us into a whirlwind of circular reasoning. That’s just so 2020, right?Whatever, the sheer volume of staggeringly good albums released means that honourable mentions go to records that would have walked it in years gone by. Untitled ( Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Given Dylan’s last album of originals was in 2012, and his standards phase had concluded with a slightly meandering three-disc set in Triplicate, expectations of anything other than an archival release or new tour announcement from Dylan in 2020 were low – until, that is, some weeks into the first lockdown, when his longest ever song dropped out of a clear blue sky."Murder Most Foul" began with cringey rhymes and rose and revolved into a most extraordinary, time-defying meditation and reverie, pulling from the aethyr all the names of power from the 20th century’s canonical list of musical Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It didn’t take long for The Stooges to acquire an afterlife. They played their final show in February 1974. In May 1975, Nick Kent wrote a multi-page feature for NME on the ups and downs of Iggy Pop and Co. In September 1975, Sounds reviewed a new album by the defunct band titled Metallic KO. One side of it was recorded at that final show.“I'm a tasteless little bastard and I really enjoy it,” wrote Giovanni Dadomo of the wreckage captured on the vinyl. “It's no great rock 'n' roll record per se. What I do believe is that it's an astonishing piece of documentary work, revealing as it does the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The music year draws to a close and theartsdesk on Vinyl presents its festive selection. We go easier on the cheesier at this time of year, but there are also gold nuggets in there too. Time to buy the vinyl lover in your life a little something? Here's a vibrant cross section of many, many kinds of music on plastic, running the gamut from Neil Diamond to a feminist concept album about mermaids. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHTiña Positive Mental Health Music (Speedy Wunderground) + Tom Sanders Only Magic (Mosho Moshi)Usually December’s Vinyl of the Month is a Christmas album but this year, for Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Christmas albums are traditionally, pretty cheesy affairs and Seasonal Shift sees Tex-Mex rockers Calexico join in with the spirit of things, invite a disparate group of friends into the studio and lay the Panela on seriously thick. As well as some original tunes, which often find themselves channelling Roy Orbison at his most family-friendly, there are covers of songs by the Plastic Ono Band and Tom Petty, and even some surprising cultural cross-overs. There’s not too much that actually references a birth in Bethlehem though and sometimes it works and sometimes it really doesn’t. Quite what Read more ...