rock
Barney Harsent
With the possible exception of Talking Heads, I can’t think of another band who had such an exceptional run of early albums as Simple Minds. After a promising but uneven debut, they released Real to Real Cacophony in 1979 and barely put a foot wrong for five (some might argue six) albums.Big Music (2014) was a knowing look over a shoulder; a direct reference to the stark electronic thrum of their early albums, and one which largely eschewed the later stadium pomp. In doing so, it was open to accusations of mannered pastiche – some thought it an odd choice for a band that had once set so much Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Since releasing their first record, Bingo Masters Breakout, Mark E Smith (b 1957) has led The Fall through some of rock music’s most extreme and enthralling terrain, cutting a lyrical and musical swathe that few other artists can match. An outsider, self-confessed renegade, and microphone-destroying magus, Smith has seen dozens if not hundreds of musicians pass through the ranks of The Fall over the last 34 years. With their 28th studio album featuring a line-up that’s as stable as it gets in The Fall's rickety table of elements, they continue to make music like no other band, young or old. Read more ...
howard.male
Growing up with the music of David Bowie is probably not the best grounding for being a music critic because it raises expectations unreasonably high for every other adventurous musician one happens upon. When I first heard the intense, bordering-on-hysterical music of Merrill Garbus (the main creative force behind Tune-Yards) eight or so years ago, I actually had to get up from my desk and pace the room. I was so excited to hear something that both acknowledged pop and rock templates and crushed them underfoot. But with love comes responsibility. But unfortunately Garbus seems to have Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Many hard rock aficionados say that Motörhead’s greatest work was all with the “classic” line-up of Lemmy, drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor and guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke (who died last week aged only 67 - this review was written before that news came through). While there’s no denying their 1976-82 output was storming, Motörhead’s later career contained multitudes of gems that were its match. The band’s guitarist for this period, for 31 years from 1984 until Lemmy’s death, was Phil Campbell. He now releases the debut album by a band he formed with his three sons shortly after his Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Readers familiar with Nick Coleman’s 2012 memoir The Train in the Night will know before embarking on this book that the author suffered the worst possible fate for a music journalist: deafness, a problem (Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss) which began in 2007, had improved somewhat by 2010, declined catastrophically, then partially returned in his “good ear” before a severe sinus infection in 2015 wreaked further havoc.In the period when he was granted some respite, Coleman binged - he calls it harvesting - listening obsessively to particular singers and songs, “frantically stashing Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Five years might not, at first, seem like a long time between albums, certainly when you consider that even tectonic shift left the Avalanches in its wake while they were creating Wildflower. But a lot has happened to Californian indie rockers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club during that time. Not least, drummer Leah Shapiro has undergone surgery – crowdfunded by BRMC devotees – for a serious brain condition, and her road to recovery has been mapped out for her by a surgeon who also happens to be a fan of the band. There is, it's fair to say, a lot of love in the room.As well as showing Read more ...
joe.muggs
If you see any list of greatest living drummers and the Australian Jim White isn't on it, you should look at it askance. Since he started Dirty Three in the early '90s, White has played with the cream of global alt-rock musicians: the Nick Caves, PJ Harveys, Cat Powers and Will Oldhams. But he's way, way more than a sideman, and the closer he is to the front of the stage, the more interesting the music will be.His playing is uniquely conversational and interactive, locking into and rolling around whatever foil is presented to it, often making him closer to a free jazz player than a rock Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Monterey Pop Festival in California in mid-June 1967 was a key event in the history of festival culture. There had been music festivals before in the US – Newport Folk springs to mind – but Monterey marked the point where the whimsical trend for “renaissance fairs” combined with the rising first blaze of rock music, born of psychedelia, all marinated thoroughly in LSD-flavoured happenings and love-ins. And, of course, it was filmed by DA Pennebaker, making it a visual blueprint, ripe for imitation, influencing countless generations into the idea of festivals as miniature countercultural Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Liam Gallagher is a great rock star. However, he often comes across as not a likeable person. He’s called himself “a cunt” on more than one occasion. But he bleeds inarticulate insouciance and arrogant rage. He doesn’t raise even half a smile throughout this whole gig. He carries himself with a chin-jutting, I-dare-you posture that adds up to charisma. And he can sneer-sing the hell out of a song. All that stuff used to be what we wanted from our singers before the post-Travis era of fleece-wearing, kindly, average-guy-next-door rockers.He comes on, parka zipped to the top, just like his Read more ...
Ralph Moore
“Back in the Sixties, before I was born…” Robert Plant has always been as amusing a raconteur as he is a deft weaver of different musical styles, and last night’s show at the Royal Albert Hall was no exception. In amid the music – which jumped effortlessly from past to present to positively ancient (a cover of Leadbelly’s “Gallow’s Pole”), the only way he knows how – Plant regaled the audience with stories of the Sixties (“we were fighting political corruption”) and occasionally let his band take over, watching with absolute admiration from the centre or even side of the stage.Make no mistake Read more ...
Barney Harsent
When Irish rock band U2 marked the release of 2014’s Songs of Innocence by loading it into everyone’s iTunes for free, it was an attempt to find a new angle on the "event release". While it was certainly that, it wasn’t, shall we say… universally well received. Thankfully, for its companion piece, Songs of Experience, the band has opted for an altogether more traditional delivery system. There will be no humanitarian air-drops of WAVs over the shire counties – you can tell the Home Guard to stand down.This, of course, means we're paying for the pleasure this time round – so what do we get? Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Not since the 1960s has there been so much global shit to protest about! The Sixties, of course, gave us the protest song – and how well the best of them have worn. “Masters of War” and “With God On Our Side” are timeless classics. “Give Peace a Chance” can still be heard from the barricades.There’s no doubt Neil Young means well, believes passionately, but the agitprop – much as we all agree with the sentiments – does begin to pall. Much of the music doesn’t quite cut the mustard, though if it won’t stand the test of time perhaps that’s because it doesn’t need to – the goal here is to be Read more ...