New music
Kieron Tyler
An encounter with Hamburg’s Reeperbahn is akin to assimilation into a real-life kaleidoscope where bright lights, mass revellers and shills touting bars, night clubs or strip joints combine in a single multi-sense overload. The tumultuous thoroughfare is dedicated to excess.The Reeperbahn, the main drag of Hamburg’s St. Pauli district, approximates two garish, illuminated British seafront parades – maybe Blackpool and Southend – that have been elongated and then arranged face-to-face on each side of a street with emporia such as Amsterdam Headshop, beer halls and pole-dancing venues Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The City: Now That Everything’s Been SaidWith early 1971's Tapestry, Carole King released a worldwide best seller which belatedly recognised that as an interpreter of her own songs, she had no peers. King had made the jump from the writer of songs for others to successful singer-songwriter. Harry Nilsson had done it. So had Randy Newman. Jimmy Webb would too. All three were based in Los Angeles.She had moved there from New York in 1968. The new home of America’s music business had supplanted the city where she had written “The Loco-Motion”, “Pleasant Valley Sunday, "Will You Love Me Read more ...
Barney Harsent
John Grant is nothing if not a confessional songwriter. On his last album, Pale Green Ghosts, there were moments of dark despair, caustic barbs and some surprisingly slinky grooves soundtracking a man who was offering himself up with a breathtaking honesty. On Grey Tickles, Black Pressure – a title that places us somewhere between mid-life crisis and full-on nightmare – he is similarly laid bare, but the literate humour has now become full-on funny and could well mark him out as the best lyricist of his generation.Although Grant says he wanted to get “moodier and angrier” on this record, he Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Hurts first appeared half a decade ago, a duo from Manchester who aspired to Depeche Mode but sounded vaguely like OneRepublic and similar. Which is to say they dealt in stadium sized, studio-orchestrated melodrama that veered towards the ostentatious and hand-wringing. In mainland Europe, they’re big news and at home their previous two albums have been Top Ten.With this third outing, Hurts have drifted into the realms of the preposterous. Most of Surrender consists of hysterical hi-NRG stomping delivered with po-faced bombast, like a cross between pop-prog megastars Muse and the 2005 Euro- Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It has been three years since The Lemonheads, Evan Dando’s slacker kings, last toured the UK and six years since they released Varshons, a covers album. So it was a pleasant surprise when they recently announced a return to these shores to play some shows with no particular product to push, especially given that anyone might imagine that they had since long disappeared. Power pop with the odd dash of country and punk rock never goes out of fashion though, and in front of a room full of 30- and 40-somethings, the band dished out an evening of nostalgia that was enough to cast minds back Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Sir Tom Jones’ recording career has enjoyed an Indian summer for the first two releases of this trilogy, 2010’s Praise & Blame and 2012’s Spirit In The Room. This concluding album, another collaboration with producer Ethan Johns, returns to a similar heritage hinterland of folk, country and Sixties rock, though with more explicitly personal overtones: it accompanies an autobiography, Over The Top And Back (a “self-penned” autobiography, it’s promised), published next week. Sir Tom is still in fine voice, that baritone as firm and dark as seasoned mahogany, but in a rather Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Light in You, Mercury Rev’s eighth studio album, is issued at the end of this week. It is their first for seven years, following 2008’s Snowflake Midnight. In the run up to its release, main-men and constants Jonathan Donahue and Grasshopper (born Sean Mackowiak) took time to reflect on the new album, their attitudes to Mercury Rev's longevity – their debut album, Yerself Is Steam came out in 1991 – and their feelings about how music is heard and recorded.The Mercury Rev of 2015 is different to that of 2008. Although their sound is as affecting and ethereal as ever, and their songs as Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It’s sometimes suggested that few things in music are as ridiculous as Christian metal. The point, however, is moot. The band Stryper, for instance, play with such inspired fury any sermonising seems entirely organic. Then there are the likes of Alice Cooper; so low-key about his faith you might not even know he had one. Most surprising of all is Cooper lookalike Blackie Lawless. For those who haven’t followed his career closely, the W.A.S.P. lead singer – famous for “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” – is also born again. He has been for some years.The title Golgotha here, of course, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
From its title-track opening cut to the final moments of its closer “Sova”, Allas Sak is recognisably a Dungen album. The musical dynamic between the Swedish quartet’s members and their collective sound is so distinctive that they effectively constitute a one-band genre. Allas Sak does not have as many dives into a jazz-informed inner space as its predecessor 2010’s Skit I Allt, and is also not as pastoral.The new album is, instead, more minimally arranged and balances melody with interrelated instrumental passages with a greater fluidity than previously. As ever, the lyrics are in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bert Jansch: It Don't Bother Me, Jack Orion / Bert Jansch & John Renbourn: Bert and JohnWhen theartsdesk last caught up with Bert Jansch, it was April 1965 and he had just issued his eponymous debut album – a set which now, as it was then, is a benchmark take on what acoustic folk and blues would be if a singular, all-embracing vision was applied. As much singer-songwriter album as template for the future of boundary-breaking British folk, Bert Jansch was as influential as it was remarkable.Jansch did not stand still after April 1965. His follow-up album It Don't Bother Me was released in Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The album of the sitcom. You don’t get a lot of those, and technically – beyond the title song – you don’t get one here either. “Cradle to the Grave” is the theme tune for Danny Baker’s autobiographical comedy currently on BBC Two, based on his memoir of growing up in south London in the same vicinity as Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook. In fact, the song came first. Squeeze’s 14th studio album, their first since 1998, has been several years in the brewing: they resumed touring in 2007 and pondered writing new material four years ago. The result is that rock’n’roll collectors’ item, an album Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Composer, pianist, producer… Max Richter (b. 1966) is nothing if not prolific, not to mention unique. His traditional training, which included Edinburgh University, the Royal Academy as well as Florence, under composer Luciano Berio sits alongside a fascination with the otherwordly sounds of German electronica and American minimalism. As well as his solo work, which blends emotional depth and power with a refreshingly direct approach, he has collaborated on operas, ballets, theatre, film and television scores.In 2012, Richter released Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Read more ...