New music
Adam Sweeting
While many acts have deployed the live album as a stop-gap or an easy money-spinner, some of Neil Young's best work was recorded live – Rust Never Sleeps, Weld and Arc-Weld, Live at Massey Hall 1971, the enigmatic Time Fades Away and so on. As an artist who works spontaneously and intuitively, much of his studio work is effectively live anyway.With Earth, Young has put a new spin on the live approach by picking a batch of songs from across his career, recorded onstage last year with backing band Promise of the Real (featuring Willie Nelson's sons Lukas and Micah), then piecing them together Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Of all the challenges the Chilis have faced over the years none has been greater than how to deal with guitarist John Frusciante's occasional spells of retirement. When, in the mid-nineties superstar axeman Dave Navarro stood in for him, his technical style lacked emotional simplicity. Frusciante was coaxed back. Then, when in 2009 the guitarist finally left for good, the band hired Josh Klinghoffer. Yet what initially seemed like an inspired choice, resulted in an album that was, ultimately, underwhelming. Now Klinghoffer returns with The Getaway – notably, also the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
When folk rock’s demon fiddler Dave Swarbrick died at 75 on 3 June, it was barely noticed that Real Gone Music released Fairport Convention’s Live in Finland 1971 the same day. Featuring the lineup of Swarbrick, Dave Mattacks (drums), Simon Nicol (guitar), and Dave Pegg (bass), which performed at the annual Ruisrock festival that 22 August, the disc features seven songs played with such force and briskness you’d think they wanted to get the hell away from the Archipelago Sea.Either that or they wanted to show the Finns that they could rock as hard as fellow festival acts the Kinks, Canned Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Telegram Sam” by T. Rex spent its second and final week at the top of the singles chart in the week of 12 February 1972. A month later, on 18 March, Marc Bolan and his band played two shows at Wembley’s Empire Pool to a sell-out crowd under the spell of what was labelled Bolanmania or T. Rextasy. Bolan seemed unstoppable. Before “Telegram Sam”, the success of “Ride a White Swan”, “Hot Love”, “Get it on” and “Jeepster” suggested he was as big as The Beatles. Fittingly, a real-life Beatle directed the camera crews capturing the Wembley shows on film.Born to Boogie was made at these shows. Its Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Found Festival 2016 got a couple of things right. The choice of music-makers was solid and the broad cross-section of friendly people who attended was admirable. But, unfortunately, everything else went wrong. Worst of all was the behaviour of the security team who, by the end of the day, had become hi-viz-jacketed herds of power-dizzy bullies, marauding around the site.The idea of the festival, born of a south London club night and in its fourth year, was to fill Brockwell Park, from 11am until 9pm, with five marquee tents of underground techno, disco and house, plus a sixth outdoor stage Read more ...
howard.male
It’s not that there’s anything lacking in the writing quality on Ms Mvula’s second album (or third if you include her powerful orchestral revisiting of Sing To The Moon), it’s just that its overall effect becomes a little wearying after a while. It’s the production that’s the problem. The wall of voices that partly constitutes this Birmingham lass's signature sound is for much of the time so awash with reverb that the ear longs to escape the cavernous space being artificially simulated.This problem first became apparent to me during the hymn-like “Show Me Love”. The illusion that the music is Read more ...
Dylan Moore
Laura Mvula talks almost as much as she sings. Between songs she confesses to rambling, but her musings – on heartbreak, on “toilet analogies” for the recording process, on meeting the Duke of Edinburgh and then falling over – are never less than disarmingly engaging. At times it verges on stand-up comedy. Mostly, she simply reveals aspects of herself: charismatic, sassy, down-to-earth, a girl from Birmingham with an incredible gift. The show begins with “Who I Am” and all but ends with “Phenomenal Woman”. It’s pretty easy to see the middle of the gig as an equals sign.There’s a kind of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The names may be unfamiliar, but Folque and Undertakers Circus are as good as better-known bands. Despite being musical bedfellows neither Norwegian band is as esteemed as, say, Trader Horne and Trees or Colloseum and Lighthouse. Folque issued their eponymous debut album in 1974. Despite line-up changes, the band was active until 1984. Undertakers Circus issued two albums, the first of which was 1973’s Ragnarock. The original band ran out of steam around 1976. Original pressings of Folque fetch between £40 and £80. Ragnarock is very rare and sells for around £70. The reissue of each album is Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Glowing Man may be the declared final album from Swans’ present line-up, but it is certainly no whimpering exit. On the contrary, it is a thing of intense and magnificent beauty that doesn’t once let up for over two hours – despite several tracks that clock in at well over 20 minutes long.Opaque lyrics and stirring primal music that taps directly into the soul are again the order of the day for Swans. Moving from the Pink Floyd-esque dreamy but dark psychedelia of “Cloud of Forgetting” and “Cloud of Unknowing”, Michael Gira’s crew take in the menacing Gothic country blues of “People Like Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The fourth album from 25-year-old Texan singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz is a beautiful mope. It’s country-flavoured but is neither overflowing with syrupy emotion, nor honed to flinty Cash/Rubin desolation. Jarosz, who recently graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, hails from a 21st-century milieu, far from cotton-picking and moonlit porch banjos echoing across the sagebrush.Discovered, while still at school, by Alison Krauss/Harry Connick Jr-producer Gary Paczosa, and signed since to his label, Jarosz's Undercurrent, also produced by Paczosa in his Nashville studio, is a Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Led Zeppelin are an icon of musical class. Train, even their admirers must admit, are not. With this faithful, perhaps too faithful cover, the credit can only flow one way. Responses to this album have been a touchstone of journalistic identity, with our competitor sites posting sarcastic reviews, only to be accused below the line of snobbery, ignorance, and, most damning of all, hipsterdom.So let’s get this out of the way. Rather like Monet re-painted by numbers in Dulux high gloss, Train have re-created the outlines of Led Zeppelin, but without the depth and nuance. In songs like “Whole Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Life and art have generally had a troubled relationship. In the case of former hobo and punk-blues singer Seasick Steve, however, it all seemed so simple. When he sang "Dog House Boogie" on his extraordinary Hootenanny debut nearly a decade ago, it was his grit and authenticity, even more than his musical skills – though the two go hand-in-hand – that the audience fell in love with. Read any fan forum and it’s clear that Steve is loved because most audiences believe he’s experienced exactly what he sings.The official biography, documented repeatedly in the hundreds of press interviews Steve Read more ...