New music
theartsdesk
It’s forecast to rain for a fortnight, just as the schools tip out their restless young. The roads are jammed, and Calais hasn’t been this bunged up since Edward III laid siege for the whole year in 1346. It must be summer. To help you celebrate if you’re one of the lucky ones who got away, or to get through it if not, our new music team has suggested a summer playlist both eclectic and exhilarating. From Madonna to Motörhead, the Beach Boys to My Bloody Valentine, whether you’re downing cocktails, or drowning out the rain on the tent roof, these are our songs of summer. A Man Called Read more ...
Matthew Wright
To some critics, Joss Stone manages her career with the authenticity and conviction of her accent at the 2007 Brit Award ceremony. Yet with seven albums under her belt, a Grammy, two Brit Awards, and her own record label by the age of 28, her approach seems to be working. And for this latest, she’s stepped boldly outside her familiar soul territory. She got to know Jamaican star Damian Marley for Mick Jagger’s and Dave Stewart’s project Superheavy, and amongst the stew of flavours on display this time, reggae is the spiciest. There is a story of sorts to the album, about the break-up of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
A cover of Talking Heads' “This Must Be the Place” opens Sing Into My Mouth and it's classic Iron and Wine - all Appalachian harmonies and gently plucked guitar. Like Sam Beam's earlier cover of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” the arrangement lends the original - a slightly abstracted piece of electronic pop - fresh heart and simple emotion. But it's the only song in this collaboration with this trademark sound. What then of the other 11 tracks covered by the big-bearded singer and his friend, the Band of Horses’ front man?Oddly for two such colourful Read more ...
Phoebe Michaelides
Many festivals have become increasingly family-friendly. The children who, 10 years ago, were taken to outdoor multi-dayers such as Latitude, Camp Bestival and the now-defunct Big Chill, are now teenagers. Many have grown up with festivals as a usual part of their summer holidays - rather than a countercultural escape - and now they want to strike out on their own. Theartsdesk asked 17-year-old aspiring actor-writer Phoebe Michaelides to attend Latitude (with a friend) and report back. This is what she had to say. With minds full of high expectations and Morrisons Basic cider in hand, my Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Owl & Mouse is a name so cutesy that even the Scottish legions of twee who bloom, decade after decade, from the ashes of Eighties indie – the Pastels, Camera Obscura, Belle & Sebastian, etc – might flinch at it. And like that movement, with its endless coy, baby-sweet reassessment of the Velvet Underground, the music of Owl & Mouse initially seems to have a glaze of guilelessness about it, a pride in naivety. Keep listening, though, sucking down the sugar-coated but eventually lovelorn lyrical themes, and this debut defies such expectations.Owl & Mouse are not from Scotland, Read more ...
Matthew Wright
With nothing to sell except herself, Jessie J was at her most engaging and spontaneous last night, closing the summer series at Somerset House, and her own current tour. There was no need to plug her latest album, Sweet Talker, now nearly a year old, so the set picked and mixed her whole career. For some musicians that would emphasise a stylistic narrative of some kind; but Jessie has always been characterised by a kind of generic patchwork quilt, with soul, pop, and R&B sharing a slightly uneasy bed alongside snatches of hip hop and dance music. It took the engineers a minute to Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Lautari Vol 67: Live 2014 features Michael Zak on clarinet, flute and shawn, with bassist Marcin Pospieszalski, fiddle player Maciej Filipczuk and the prepared piano and accordion of Jacek Halas.That instrument list gives you an idea of the musical territory you’re travelling through. Just as Jabusz Prusinowski Kompania, of which Zak is a member, specialises in antique Polish styles, so Lautari set about blowing wind, striking keys and drawing bows across a musical landscape of angular and contemporary arrangements of deeply rural tunes and dances.Sonically, they shape-shift from antique Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Mission of Burma: signals, calls, and marches/Vs.The opening moments of Mission of Burma’s “That’s When I Reach for my Revolver” still exhilarate. Recorded in early 1981, it was the first track on the Boston-based band’s 12-inch EP signals, calls, and marches. The tension, power and forward motion of this sparse encapsulation of rock at its most textured lay the bed for a brooding melody drawing its lyrical jumping-off point from – depending on how the story is told or who is telling it – either a Hermann Göring comment about his antipathy to culture or a line from 1930s German play by Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
When you’re a big Bruce Springsteen fan, as I am, there’s a game that you end up getting quite good at: one in which you have to separate the stories, about the hard-drinkin’, hard-livin’ workingman, from the multi-millionaire songwriter. Roots rocker Jason Isbell writes from a similar place as Springsteen – albeit on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line – but his work has never presented as much of a dichotomy. Sure, it’s not like he’s at Springsteen’s level of success, but with his understated, gravelly vocal delivery and gentler melodies, his portraits of Southern life are Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There’s been a real sense of expectation surrounding Kevin Parker’s new offering, with rumours of a disco album from the saviour of psychedelia after a conversion to the joys of the Bee Gees while on mushrooms. That sounded an interesting proposition – one that could make the mind bogle.“Let It Happen” is a bold opening gambit – a delightfully melodic stroll over a glitchy bridge to an epic conclusion. It’s head-spinningly good, but doesn’t lead us by the hand to a dancefloor. “Nangs”, a dreamy pop vignette with heavy, hip-hop beats and wonky strings is lovely, but it’s also territory Koushik Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
One of vinyl’s more controversial corners is the postal subscription club. Sign up to one of these and, for a fee, a number of records are sent to your home. The draw is supposed to be exclusivity of content or simply trusting the taste of a faultless musical guru. Subscription is thus, to put it mildly, a mixed bag. Sites such as Wax&Stamp are typical. Their policy is to send two-per-month, one chosen by them and one by a guest selector. Most of the real success stories, though, are labels with solid reputations, such as the longstanding Fortuna Pop and Too Pure singles clubs. Flying Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If you have a tendency to use the spellings f*** and c***, perhaps Sleaford Mods are not for you. If you can cope with a liberal dose of expletives and a fiery attitude, however, then Key Markets is as good a reflection of the state of Austerity Britain as anyone has put to music. As with 2014’s breakthrough Divide and Exit album, Jason Williamson lays down barbed snarls and vitriolic stream-of-consciousness vocals, like an East Midlands Travis Bickle, while Andrew Fearn provides claustrophobic grooves made up of minimalist loops and beats that make it clear that neither of them could ever be Read more ...