It’s interesting to ponder why, after 22 years in the business, the Indigo Girls aren’t more successful or better known outside the cognoscenti and their very loyal fanbase. Their intricate harmonies and beautifully constructed guitar-based folk-rock has attracted many fans (and sometime collaborators) in the music industry - from Natalie Merchant and Ani DiFranco to Lucinda Williams and REM - and one of their albums went platinum. They even won a Grammy, so what’s not to like?
new music reviews
joe.muggs
It comes to something when the logic of a German act calling themselves “Gas” is the least troubling element of a perfomance. Not that Wolfgang Voigt's ambient music, or the slowly-evolving digital art of Petra Hollenbach projected on the Barbican's cinema screen, contained any obvious shock tactics – but the whole 80 minutes created just about as unsettling an experience as one could imagine from abstracted sound and image.
Adam Sweeting
Would-be axe murderers of the BBC often propose to lop off (among other things) TV channels Three and Four, but Four’s music coverage is vastly better value for viewers’ money than the executive pension fund. Synth Britannia stuck firmly to Four’s “Britannia” formula, being a bunch of talking heads and clumps of archive footage interwoven with synth-pop classics from the late Seventies and early Eighties. But that’s OK as long as the raw material is strong, and this saga of post-punk, pre-New Romantic gadget-pop was often fascinating and sometimes even thought-provoking.
robert.sandall
Performing your classic album as a full concert item has become a significant part of rock’s heritage culture in recent years, and the tide of potential classics is rising all the time.
Russ Coffey
With her impish looks and translucent, near-perfect voice Cara Dillon does well to avoid the “coffee table” epithet. As a "product" she looks prime for mass marketing into the suburban dinner party circuit. But as an artist she is much better than that.
howard.male
If Bowie, Bolan, and Roxy Music were the shimmering glam triumvirate of early 1970s British pop, then what were Mott the Hoople? Surely they don’t belong with the likes of the Sweet, Suzi Quatro and… er… Gary Glitter. In fact with their R&B and rock 'n' roll roots they’ve more in common with some of the decade’s more credible rockers such as the Faces or even the New York Dolls. It was in their ragged swagger and the stylised arrogance that vocalist Ian Hunter projected while implicitly inviting every teenager in the land to join his gang rather than that bacofoil-clad impostor’s gang.
robert.sandall
You’ve got to take the pedal off the metal at some point, and in 2009 the prodigiously energetic New Yorker Joan Wasser – otherwise known as Joan As Police Woman - has apparently decided to ease up and release an album of cover versions.
joe.muggs
For some people, dubstep has an identity problem. Its suburban origins and recent global spread, its propensity for hybridity, the relatively genial nature of the scene, and perhaps worst of all its popularity with – whisper it – students lead some commentators to regard it with suspicion.
Peter Culshaw
They played their first concert in 1969, and 40 years later the TP Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou, to give them their full name, had their UK debut last night at the Barbican as part of their first European tour. They are the latest expression of a growing cult of classic bands who hit their peak in 1970s Africa. The music of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti has never been more popular, strange jazz from 1970s Addis Ababa has been selling impressively on the Ethiopiques series of records, while Senegal’s Orchestre Baobab have reformed to great acclaim.
joe.muggs
Dinosaur Jr never change. Formed in 1984, the trio added a heavy dose of rock classicism to the then-current sound of US hardcore, inadvertently inventing grunge in the process. Since then, members have come and gone around lead singer/guitarist J Mascis – eventually returning in 2005 to their original lineup featuring Lou Barlow (also leader of Sebadoh and Folk Implosion) on bass and “Murph” on drums – and the Mascis has calmly watched scenes come and go.