rock
Kieron Tyler
Black Widow: SacrificeIt wasn’t John Lennon’s fault, but things weren’t the same after the “bigger than Jesus” scandal of 1966. Pop music had been connected to religion in a way slightly edgier than Cliff Richard or the Salvation Army's The Joystrings' happy celebrations in song. The doors were now open to a darker take on faith.The Rolling Stones waxed about evil in 1968’s “Sympathy for the Devil”. The B-side of the same year’s “Jumpin' Jack Flash" was "Child of the Moon", which referenced Aleister Crowley’s magical novel Moonchild. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s “Fire”, with its “ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Though advertised as a heartfelt and autobiographical work, U2's 13th studio album tells you far more about the state of the music industry than it does about the intimate inner stories of the musicians. Tying the album release to the launch of Apple's iPhone 6 merely reinforced the view that U2 is no longer a band, more an offshore corporation, and was bound to strike many people as a desperate ploy from an outfit struggling to stay meaningful. Humiliatingly, many iTunes users have been so enraged by finding Songs of Innocence landing uninvited in their libraries that Apple have had to Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The story is a familiar one: four lads rattling through three-minute garage rock songs full of sweary, lovelorn couplets. With the exception of the name (a tribute, apparently, to a busker that frontman Van McCann met as a child) there’s little to set Llandudno four-piece Catfish and the Bottlemen apart on paper - but there’s something about their debut album that makes me smile. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, making it the perfect length for my walk home from work, The Balcony is the aural equivalent of orange squash: drunk too often it tastes cheap and a little bit sickly, but Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s been that long since the Gaslight Anthem could be called a punk band with any sort of seriousness that a good half of the crowd at their last round of UK shows would have balked at the notion. But it leaves the critic/fan with something of a dilemma: how to marry a continued love of the band with a loathing for the Killer Kings of Leon-style stadium rockers that recent releases have drawn comparisons to? The answer comes in those throwaway lines of frontman Brian Fallon; the sort that written down look like the worst sort of rock ’n’ roll cliché but which, combined with just the right Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The danger of working successfully in many genres is that fans come to expect something revolutionary with each release. A secondary threat is that you succumb to generic schizophrenia, and thus are never quite sure which voice to speak with. Fin Greenall, founder/leader of the folk-blues trio Fink, has a touch of both of these in this latest release, in which songs of menacing Americana sit somewhat uneasily alongside pieces of lugubrious personal reflection. He may be feted for his eclecticism; he’s more likely to suffer for failing to please all his fans. The title track and “Pilgrim Read more ...
caspar.gomez
PrologueOn Thursday 26 June I arrive at a cloudy but warm Glastonbury Festival, set up camp, eat sausages, chase after DJ Richie Hawtin for an interview that never happens, then acclimatise, settle, let this hedonist Mecca do its work on me…Friday 27 JuneIt starts as spotting. Then it lets go. The sound of droplets pattering against the outer skin of the brown four-person tent becomes a regular tattoo. I lie within, waiting out the mind-fuzz of yesterday’s cider, whisky and chemicals, munching on a breakfast of Morrisons Cheese Savouries (which are, incidentally, addictive). I wonder if 2014 Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It feels as if the life-on-the-road song has become a rite of passage for those rock bands that manage to clock up enough years together, but after 20 years in the business Texan alt-country rockers Old 97’s probably have more of a claim to it than most. Clocking in at just under six minutes, “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” is one of the best examples of the genre, regardless of its titular accuracy. It’s a meandering, tongue-in-cheek portrait of the rock star excesses, but also the tedium, that comes with life in a moderately successful touring band. As frontman Rhett Miller reminisces, most Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Dead Moon: In the Graveyard, Unknown Passage, DefianceAfter a few notes of barbed-wire, bent-string guitar, a descending riff kicks in. It’s a relative of the uptempo version of “Hey Joe”. The voice starts. It’s high-pitched, as if Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant had only Love’s Arthur Lee and The 13th Floor Elevator’s Roky Erickson as an influence. The lyrics are hard to make out but touch on mean days and a girl who turns the singer cold. He might as well be dead and in a graveyard. The momentum is tempered by a break borrowed from The Elevators' “You’re Gonna Miss me”. The production is Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If they ever wanted somebody to make a sequel to Marty Robbins's Gunfighter Ballads and usher in a rockabilly revival for good measure, Jack White is the man. The 11 tracks on this new album - the follow-up to 2012's Blunderbuss - reek of rage, lust, drink and gunpowder (among other things), and most of them crash along like a herd of stampeding buffalo.Identifying every ingredient White has smuggled in could take years, but he squeezes bags of mileage out of crashing piano chords, guitars that sound like steel girders being hammered out of shape and country fiddles that yowl like mating cats Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Tonight Birmingham was treated to a guitar fest of epic proportions, as the Japanese, Hawkwind-esque experience that is Bo Ningen hit town. Prior to the main event, we were treated to the boisterous thrash of The Scenes, who finished their set with the flippant yet amusingly named “Anorexia Is Boring”, and the Teenage Fanclub-esque 12-strings of Younghusband. Neither, however, quite prepared the crowd for the ear-lacerating noise and mesmerising groove of the headliners.Taigen Kawabe and his band of psychedelic renegades arrived on stage amid swirls of dry ice. Dressed like extras from the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Anyone who remembers the critical mauling that The Horrors received on the release of their first album, 2007’s Strange House, might be surprised to learn that seven years later, they have just put out a fourth set of new songs. Not only that, but that it wouldn’t be a stretch to describe Luminous as eagerly awaited by many.However, while the release of each previous Horrors album has seen significant stylistic musical leaps, Luminous sees the band settle into the sound of 2011’s Skying and build further upon its early Simple Minds-esque template. This isn’t to say, however, that Luminous is Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Jon Lord may have tickled his last ivory in 2012, but last night his spirit lived defiantly on. The great and the good from both heavy and contemporary music gathered in his memory. It was for a serious purpose - to raise funds for pancreatic cancer care. But, boy, what a time we had doing it. A revolving door of stars brought us wild solos, screaming vocals and thundering rhythms. But before all the classic rock, culminating in a set from Deep Purple, came something a little more classical.The first hour was devoted to Lord’s orchestral compositions. Our host was “whispering” Bob Harris, who Read more ...