New music
Andrew Cartmel
The year 1987 was a notable one in music history. In February, Burt Bacharach won the Grammy for best song with “That’s What Friends Are For”, and two months later Joss Stone was born in England. At the age of 17 Stone would be nominated for three Grammies of her own, and at 19 would become a winner. She remains a platinum-selling singer and songwriter at the top of her game.But it’s Bacharach who has made the most astonishing mark as a writer and recording artist. One could cite his nine number ones and 66 top-40 hits, three Oscars and eight Grammies, but bare facts and figures can’t begin Read more ...
Joe Muggs
If last night made anything clear it's that some things are still some way beyond the reach of hipster reappropriation. The audience in Hyde Park for Carole King was 99% white and middle-aged, with the very few younger people scattered about appearing to be teenagers there with their parents. Within that, though, there was a broad spread of class, and – reflecting the appeal of King's Tapestry album at the time of its release – everyone from grizzled old hippies to a whole legion of straight-as-a-die mums and dads of the kind who have probably only bought half a dozen other albums since the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
For a self-made band that found success via the creation of quirky, imaginative YouTube videos spread via social media, there's a level of expectation regarding the same kind of creativity in their live shows. But in fact Canadian indie band Walk Off The Earth's REVO tour experience is a very simple one. Starting with "Rule the World", the band seemed understated, even a little unsure. But then came "Walking Off the World Tonight", a song containing lyrics that talk you through the building of a song – rusty old guitars, a shaker and a uke, being that’s all that’s needed to create Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pictured above is the label of an exceptionally important Pink Floyd record issued last November. Only a thousand people bought a copy. That was the amount that hit shops. Pink Floyd 1965: Their First Recordings was a double seven-inch set with a historic importance inversely proportionate to its availability. It was the first ever outing for the earliest recordings by the band and, as such, the earliest compositions for them by its prime songwriter Syd Barrett. He died on 7 July 2006 at age 60, and a look at this hard-to-find yet significant release is a tribute to his memory.The band is the Read more ...
howard.male
When David Bowie died in January, one person quick off the mark with a striking and respectful tribute was the American composer Jherek Bischoff with Strung Out in Heaven – a string quartet medley of half a dozen of Bowie’s songs. And in fact we‘re back in Bowie territory here in that these tentative yet austere instrumentals are full of romantic yearning and physiological unease reminiscent of the ambient sides (in vinyl terms) of the thin white one’s Low and Heroes.The main difference is that Bowie, Brian Eno and Tony Visconti utilised synthesisers and Bischoff has a preference for Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Another splendidly eclectic globalist radio show hosted by Peter Culshaw. The show's featured album of the month is the impeccable The Woman at The End Of The World by the veteran Brazilian songstress Elza Soares. We have remixed desert blues, Pakistani film jazz, Romanian brass mayhem, avant folk from Ukraine and a track from what promises to be the hit world music album of the summer - Calypso Rose’s Far From Home. Not to mention a world exclusive preview of Susheela Raman’s new album (a gamelan reworking of the Beatles psychedelic classic "Tomorrow Never Knows"). To listen Read more ...
Thomas Rees
£100 – £175 is a lot of money to pay for two hours of music, but that’s what it cost to see Pat Metheny at Ronnie Scott’s this week. The guitar great is in town with his new quartet, a dream team comprising British pianist Gwilym Simcock, bassist Linda Oh (a major name on the New York scene who I first saw performing with Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas’ Sound Prints quintet) and drummer Antonio Sánchez, a long-time Metheny collaborator and the composer of the acclaimed score to Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman.Shoehorned in at the bar, with the rest of the club packed to the rafters, I Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Every decade throws up a handful of guitar acts intent on capturing the mood of the age. The Noughties, for example, marched to the spiky rhythms of Kasabian and Kaiser Chiefs. Almost a decade on and the current crop have a somewhat heavier touch. Bands like Biffy Clyro, for instance, set out their intent – to speak with a serious rock voice – with impressive tattoos and heavy chords. Except Clyro also serve their heavy dishes with a side order of mainstream AOR, which makes some doubt whether it's really rock at all.A parallel might be drawn with Imagine Dragons' mega hit " Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Not every Glastonbury can be blazing summer. 2016 was hard work, with real world gloom permeating the already damp party bubble. But, as your teachers used to say, you only get out what you put in. The only way to take things was to go hard or go home, no quarter given and pay later.Thus, this report comes way after the rest. The contemporary media is focused on putting content online as fast as possible. A response after the event is commercial suicide, no longer an option. But how can you smear yourself in Glastonbury’s madness if you spend half your time in the Media Tent, a dead zone of Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The Eighties revival in dance music started in earnest with the Electroclash subculture, the first records emerging around 1996. That is to say, the Eighties revival has now lasted twice as long as the actual Eighties itself. And if you think that the heyday of electropop – which is what we generally mean by Eighties sounds – really lasted from about 1978 to 1984, we're talking about a very long revival for a very short “decade”.The thing about dance music, though, is that its riffs and schticks seem particularly durable. Because they were aimed at a relatively unchanging physical environment Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The first I heard of Beyond the Wizards Sleeve was eight whole years ago. It was a tune called “Winter in June” and was a Lemon Jelly-meets-The Orb-style cosmic noodle with the added, and memorable, benefit of long-deceased BBC gardener Percy Thrower rambling over the top. It was exquisitely rustic English electronic weirdness. From their Viz-on-LSD name onwards, BTWS seemed to be just a passing fancy for Erol Alkan and Richard Norris, a couple of thoroughly imaginative DJ-producers with their fingers in multifarious musical pies, and it seemed unlikely they’d do much more with it.And so it Read more ...
Katie Colombus
I’m going to be honest, Metronomy isn’t really my bag. Perhaps I’m not hipster or highbrow enough, but I just don’t get their jam. I feel a bit like Jon at the beginning of Lenny Abrahamsson’s Frank – slightly bewildered by the depths of the intellectual pop he’s witnessing, recognising the genius in there somewhere, but somehow on the outside of the super-cool in-crowd.To me, Metronomy are basically saying “huh, yeah, it is all a big joke, like the lyrics are so simple but they’re funny and witty, but the fact that you’re laughing at them makes you the joke, unless you’re laughing Read more ...