New music
Guy Oddy
Primal Scream might reasonably be referred to as elder statesmen of rock‘n’roll these days, and 30 years or so since first getting together, it would be fair so say that they’ve tried a few different music genres on for size. There's been gentle Byrds-like melodies, MC5 rock action, blissed-out dance music, Rolling Stones swagger, and monstrously heavy motorik jackhammers. The latest incarnation of the Scream, however, seem to have decided to take on the electro-goth mantle from Depeche Mode for a guitar-lite bunch of tunes that's unlikely to be viewed as a classic release anytime soon. Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The opening track of Leonard Cohen’s new album says it all: the hum of a spine-chillingly eerie male choir, joined by the throb of an irresistible bass line. We're in for a slow joy-ride through the depths of the underworld. In “You Want It Darker”, one of his unquestioned masterpieces, a title-song as rich in soulful images as anything he has ever written, and in a voice close to a whisper, Cohen alludes to “a million candles burning for the help that never came”. He is, as ever, singing of the shadows that fill our inner and outer worlds, “a lullaby for suffering” in which the only Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A decade ago I was sent to interview George Martin and his son Giles about Love, the remarkable remix of the Beatles catalogue which they created for Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles show in Las Vegas. After the interview proper, in which both talked about collaborating with each other and with Paul, Ringo and the widows of John and George, I asked Sir George Martin if we could talk about an area of particular interest to me.I was working at the time on a book about the French horn, and part of the idea was to visit all the big moments in horn history. One of those was “For No One” (from Revolver) Read more ...
james.woodall
For many pop-pickers, the presiding image of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee will be Brian May (he – yes, of course – of Queen) grinding out the national anthem on the roof of Buckingham Palace. For me, there was a much more meaningful moment later the same evening when Paul McCartney, Her Majesty and a tall grey-haired man gathered on the party stage, rubbing shoulders and so magically recreating a little trope of our recent cultural history. The grey-haired man was George Martin, who for a generation of Beatles fans was That Name printed on the back of most of their albums, certainly all the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Carla Marie Williams is a songwriter, artist mentor and founder of writing collective NewCrowd. She has written for stars including Beyoncé, Girls Aloud, Kylie and Rudimental, with a BRIT Award for her contribution to Girls Aloud’s single "The Promise", and Beyoncé’s recent hit "Runnin". She grew up in Harlesden, north west London, and was involved with music from an early age, but without the resources at home for private lessons, relied on Brent’s community music facilities and a powerful instinct for initiative and dedication, which has seen her win numerous competitions, including, at 15 Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Neil Arthur is on a mission. He was once one half of Blancmange, the British synth-pop band most famous for middle-sized hits of the early 1980s, songs such as “Don’t Tell Me” and “Living on the Ceiling”. He has been the group’s sole member since 2011 and, recently, he’s been busy. Two albums came out last year, the playful Semi Detached and the instrumental, experimental Nil by Mouth, both decent outings that threw off the shackles of being a tribute act to his younger self. A few months later, Commuter 23 appears, a successful continuation of the same mission.This isn’t to say that the new Read more ...
Joe Muggs
DJs and techno producers doing “real music” doesn't always inspire the greatest of confidence: they often seem in thrall to other musicians, blind to what makes their own music special, or afraid to take the risks they would with their electronic production.However, Julius Steinhoff of Hamburg's Smallville records and Abdeslam Hammouda, with whom he's been producing house tunes since 2008, defiantly buck that trend. On this album for the ever-reliable Tokyo label Mule Musiq, they've left the dancefloor a long way behind them, and created 13 gentle meditations on life, love and the mind: each Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Music is no exception to the rule that history is littered with winners and losers. In commercial terms, however they are looked at, San Francisco’s Charlatans were losers. They issued just one single in 1966 and a belated album in 1969. While the world hummed along with Scott McKenzie’s "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" in 1967, these pioneers of the city’s scene were without a label and left adrift in the rush to sign Bay Area bands. Big Brother & the Holding Company, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and Quicksilver Messenger Service saw their stock Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The answers, for the listener curious as to whether Emmy the Great’s Second Love fared any better than her first (it’s the title of her 2009 debut as much as any reference to the songwriter’s psyche), do not emerge until its final track. “Once I was a flight risk,” Emma-Lee Moss sings softly, almost swooning, “but soon I think I will be safe … Let me get lost in you”. Which sounds as close as one gets to a happy ending, until the lyric changes with the second verse to “I wish I was a flight risk”.It’s been five years since Moss’s last album proper: five years in which the Londoner moved to LA Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Barry Adamson has recently moved to Brighton and is clearly delighted with his new home town, which he refers to, shortly after starting his set, as a “dressing-up box by the sea”. Later in the evening he introduces the Hammond organ-laden “The Sun and the Sea” by telling his audience it was written about Brighton a few years ago, before he moved there, dryly informing us that he couldn’t fail to be drawn to somewhere that has “hail in the springtime and pebbles on its nudist beach”. He appears to have already gathered a coterie of local fans who crowd to the front of the low ceilinged-venue Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Jeff Buckley, who died much too young, only made one studio album, Grace. Part-channelling his sweet-voiced father Tim, and part-exploring a strand of rock that was both dangerously wild and exquisitely sophisticated, it was a revelation and a masterpiece. To this day, it sounds as fresh and deeply moving as ever.There has been, over the years, a series of posthumous releases, some of them constructions based on half-finished work, little of which matched the sheer brilliance of Grace, as well as some impressive live material – Buckley was a powerhouse on stage, with a band that fed on his Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Read the track listing of Belgica and you might assume that this soundtrack is a compilation featuring 15 different artists from a wide variety of musical genres. In fact, it has been written and produced in its entirety by Belgian experimentalists Soulwax, using virtual bands created purely for this project. Soulwax is actually made up of Belgian brothers Stephen and David Dewaele (AKA dance titans 2manydjs) and Stefaan Van Leuven, and their latest offering accompanies a film set in a nightclub in Ghent which, on this evidence, sounds like quite a wild venue with plenty to recommend it.The Read more ...