New music
Chris Harvey
Back in the early Eighties, Test Dept were the most radical musical force in London. Their live sound, never truly captured in its intensity on a series of early cassette recordings, built out of tape cut-ups and pulverising rhythms on salvaged metal objects, could be awe-inspiring. Long before illegal rave culture, their performances felt subversive in a way that attracted surveillance. One early gig in an arch in Waterloo was raided by police, who began making random arrests.Certainly, their music was political: songs such as “Gdansk” displayed an uncompromising socialist agenda, but others Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Editors’ last album, the electronic-infused Violence, was hailed as a big departure for the indie rock band on its release a little over a year ago. It wasn’t really, it was simply the latest stage of a transformation that can be traced back to guitarist Chris Urbanowicz’s 2012 departure, and first came to light on 2015’s In Dream. For their 2018 release, the band handed over complete control of the production process to Blanck Mass, otherwise known as Ben Power of electronic drone duo Fuck Buttons. It was a fairly ballsy move by the band to offer their songs as a Blanck canvas – Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Abbey Road Studios and the anarcho-punk legends Crass seem an unlikely pairing. The new, vinyl-only reissues of The Feeding of the Five Thousand (The Second Sitting), Stations of the Crass and Best Before 1984 each bear a sticker saying “Remastered by Alex Gordon at Abbey Road Studios, as close as possible to the sound of the original release. ‘as it was in the beginning’.”“Unlikely” springs to mind because of the disconnect between the apartness and individualism of this most wilful of bands and the historic, national-fabric nature of the North London studio: the place where The Beatles Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Many groups have based their career focusing almost completely on one thing and evermore honing it. Bands ranging from The Ramones to the Cocteau Twins to the Black Keys to even the Foo Fighters could arguably be said to follow this remit. Swedish metallers Amon Amarth certainly do. Since 1992 they have been creating Viking-themed metal and for their eleventh album, they are not about to change things.Amon Amarth began at a time when Scandinavian death metal was mired in real darkness and controversy, but, although born of that scene, their sound blossomed into something much more crowd- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Never quite the household names in Britain that they were in their native USA, Daryl Hall and John Oates can nonetheless claim to be the best-selling duo in the history of popular music. With 40 million records sold, six US chart-topping singles and a heap of gold and platinum albums, they come out ahead even of such luminaries as Simon & Garfunkel or the Everly Brothers.The days of selling shed-loads of discs may have passed, but Hall & Oates are musicians to the core, and playing live is in their blood. This Wembley gig was prefaced by big-screen clips from Hall’s TV show Live from Read more ...
Ellie Porter
When you’re off to Islington’s beautiful Assembly Hall for an evening of slinky French bossa nova, it’s something of a surprise to find the Gallic groovers preceded by a droll Brummie singer who brings to mind a cross between Billy Bragg and Richard Hawley. But it turns out that Matthew Edwards, who boldly steps out on stage armed only with an acoustic guitar and a dry wit, is the perfect way to begin tonight’s evening. Edwards’ set – featuring everything from a song about "being murdered by a French actress" to an unexpected spot of yodelling – goes down well with the crowd, and then it’s Read more ...
Katherine Waters
It was in the early 2000s in a tiny, gritty bar that I first saw Rodrigo y Gabriela live. Camden was less pretty then – a look was close to a glare and there were more spikes and kohl – the nineties were that much closer. I was right at the front, pressed up against a rib-height stage, alarmingly close to the percussive thrum taking place inches above my head. The atmosphere was heady, their acoustic performance electric. Their hands moved like fire, catching the area’s thrash sensibility – I’d not heard anything like it.Over a decade on and the two are playing the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
On his second album, Swedish star DJ Kornél Kovács has achieved the impossible and made “tropical house” interesting. Somehow, he's taken every cliché of that slow, lilting pop dance sound Drake and lifestyle influencers Instagramming from pristine beaches and tweaked them to find unexpected strangeness and depths. All the tinkling marimbas, autotuned crooning (from pop duo Rebecca & Fiona), loping Latin/dancehall rhythms and pristine cleanliness you'll know from a million radio hits are here, but there's also an insidiously hallucinatory approach to the fine detail.Tiny little bleeps and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Look behind the lyrics of some of P!nk’s biggest hits, and you’ll see that those powerhouse vocals and big pop-rock choruses have always been used to distract from a certain vulnerability. But even by that standard, eighth album Hurts 2B Human might be her most plainspoken yet, with frank songs that tackle therapy, anxiety and motherhood nestled amongst the pop juggernauts you’d expect from an album that counts Max Martin, Shellback and Greg Kurstin amongst its cast of contributors.“Hustle” - co-written with Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons and producer Jorgen Odegard - gets the party started Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Suede finish “Sabotage”. It’s a mid-paced, elegant number set off by swirling, circling central guitar. Frontman Brett Anderson hangs from his microphone stand on the left apron of the stage to deliver it, with the lights down low. Afterwards he paces back to his bandmates, body taut, hair a-flop. He tells the audience he’s been involved in a long ongoing experiment; “standing in front of VOX AC30 amps for 30 years.” The resulting problem, he adds in a rising shout, “is that I can’t hear you.”It’s a showbiz shot, dryly delivered, but it works. He keeps coming back to this, demanding a louder Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Bad Religion have been making politically aware, high-speed, melodic punk rock for throwing yourself around with glorious abandon for nigh on 40 years now. As anyone who saw them at last year's Download Festival will be aware, however, their longevity does not mean that they have become stale or jaded in any way. Greg Graffin, Brett Gurewitz and their fellow rabble-rousers may be long in the tooth but they still sound like young men going full-tilt with a sound that suggests a more tuneful Dead Kennedys or a more political Husker Du. Their long-playing ode to President Tiny Hands, alternative Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Pet Shop Boys are never shy of producing stylishly conceived fan mementos. Coming not long after Faber & Faber’s hardback collection of Neil Tennant’s lyrics, this four-disc set is just such a slice of lovingly rendered memorabilia. After well over three decades in the game – but one since they had a Top 20 hit song – the duo retain a devoted following, ever eager to invest in whatever they’re up to. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am one such, and this review – of a film of a concert I’ve already reviewed on theartsdesk – should be read in that light. After all, who else is buying it Read more ...