rock
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It is unfortunate that those who hate Deap Vally find it way easier to articulate why than those who love them. There’s little new in the bluesy, garage-rock riffs that pose and swagger their way through debut album Sistronix, and it’s not as if - on the evidence of the hidden a cappella track that closes off the album - they have the greatest voices. Even the two-piece, guitar and drums setup has been done before, with the White Stripes so obvious a reference point it would be negligent not to mention it.But it is its very simplicity that makes the Californian duo’s music so direct and so Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Having witnessed Neil Young’s shambolic O2 concert on Monday – Young treating the occasional venture into his back catalogue with listless contempt whilst serving up multiple banalities from his recent albums – I considered skipping seeing more veteran American rockers. But one should never pass on a chance to see The Stooges and, as their last London concert was in 2010 (beyond supporting Soundgarden in Hyde Park one sodden Friday last summer – what kind of insult is that where The Stooges open for Soundgarden?), the atmosphere before their Meltdown performance was one of huge expectation. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"Don't say it's over," wailed Neil Young at the end of "Hey Hey, My My", his raging anthem against the dying of the light which still sounds as bellicose and cantankerous as it did in 1979. And happily it isn't over yet, because on this evidence the 67-year-old Young still looks fighting fit and raring to run round-the-clock heavy metal marathons.He'd packaged the show with some wacky dramatic trappings that seemed to specifically reference the Rust Never Sleeps era from which "Hey Hey..." sprang. Back then he toured with a bizarre crew of "Road-Eyes", while here they were dressed in zany Read more ...
joe.muggs
The original Black Sabbath were a feat of engineering on a par with a classic Land Rover or an AK47. Everything about them was basic, brutal, unadorned and brilliantly functional – and as such achieved a very real, if rather grim, kind of beauty. So it's very nice indeed to see Tony Iommi's churning detuned guitar, Ozzy Osbourne's desolate howl (one of the most inhuman voices in popular music this side of Kraftwerk, in fact) and Geezer Butler's basslines and lyrics of alienation reunited, 35 years after they last recorded together.There are issues here. Sadly original drummer Bill Ward is Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Reasons behind the prolonged absence of Queens of the Stone Age are legion, including line-up turbulence, successful side projects and the near-death experience of band linchpin Josh Homme. As if to acknowledge and compensate for the lengthy gap in new material since 2007‘s Era Vulgaris, there’s little that hasn’t been thrown into the ...Like Clockwork mix: power ballads, industrial sleaze, surprising reunions, the sound of broken glass - and Elton John on piano.That contribution - the joyous backdrop, half-buried in the mix, of a song called “Fairweather Friends” that begins like something Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
From being “a strange facsimile of the original” to generating the “first British record made by people who are 100 per cent convinced that they are doing the right thing”, Rock ‘n’ Roll Britannia breezily mapped the protracted birth of a British rock scene which could take America on at its own game. As Cliff Richard put it, what was created was “different enough to become European. Or other-worldly.” It took The Beatles to crack America, but they would not have done so without being rookies in Britain’s Fifties’ musical boot camp.That the programme tackled this familiar story with a Read more ...
Graham Fuller
For those familiar with Ginger Baker’s virtuosic musicianship, but not with his life, the biggest revelation of the warts-and-all documentary Beware of Mr Baker may be that next to drumming, playing polo was the great time-keeper’s obsession. One might expect a jet-setting country gent like Bryan Ferry to mount up for a chukka or two before teatime, but the wild man of Cream and Blind Faith, late of Lewisham? Does Topper Headon play bowls?If, as an addiction, polo didn’t match Baker’s 19-year affair with heroin, it has been almost as ruinous a pastime. Toward the end of Jay Bulger’s film, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: The Sun Rock Box - Rock ‘n’ Roll Recorded by Sam Phillips 1954-1959It’s no exaggeration to say that Sam Phillips transformed society. With his associate Ike Turner, he brought Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” to the world in 1951. He may or may not have known it then, but Phillips had set the template for what would become rock ‘n’ roll. Then, in quick succession, he disseminated the message via Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the end of 1956 rock ‘n’ roll was, indeed, here to stay. The world would never be the same again.Then there’s the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Killing Joke: The Singles Collection 1979-2012Killing Joke were one of the most singular British bands to emerge in wake of punk. Their metal-edged, tribal stomp didn’t fit in with anything else going on at the time. Collecting 33 tracks from their singles and EPs to date, The Singles Collection 1979-2012 shows them as single-minded, a trait bringing a timelessness and consistency. “In Cythera”, from 2012, is as impactful as 1988’s “America”.Their sound has changed though. The rough edges and bark of “Follow the Leaders” (1981) or "Let's All Go (to the Fire Dances)" (1983) have been tempered Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Reformed rock bands may be ten-a-penny but no other return quite matches the resurrection of Alice In Chains. The first grunge band to break big with their 1990 debut album Facelift, Alice In Chains matched Nirvana both in their ability to marry heavy riffs with haunted melodies and a genuinely desperate sense of despair: on Facelift they sang "We Die Young" while 1992’s Dirt finds nearly every song mined with self loathing alongside odes to heroin. Unsurprising then - if still shocking - that vocalist Layne Staley and bassist Mike Starr both went to early graves.Yet guitarist Jerry Cantrell Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Rock geeks will generally tell you that Deep Purple needs to include either Ritchie Blackmore or Jon Lord to be truly deserving of the name. Sadly, neither will ever again be available for duty. Lord – to whom this album is dedicated – passed away last year. Blackmore irrevocably turned his back on rock years ago. Their absence, however, has little to do with this album's deficiencies.Short of hiring a spirit-medium to bring back Lord, the band couldn’t have achieved a more classic organ sound than that of Don Airey. Guitarist Steve Morse is equally virtuoso and none of the others performs Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
While it’s impossible to recreate the impact of their astounding first Sixties sally, it’s still a thrill when a new album appears bearing the name “Stooges”. Punk’s ragged-arsed Detroit progenitors first popped up again in 2007 with visceral live shows but a lacklustre album, The Weirdness. Since then original guitarist Ron Asheton has died and, in a strange mirror to history, James Williamson, guitarist on 1973's classic Raw Power, has returned to the fold (following a 30 year career in engineering management!)For fans who dared to hope, it’s good rather than great news. This isn’t an Read more ...