New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Gerry & The Holograms

Kieron Tyler Sunday, 02 April 2017

It’s been suggested that New Order’s “Blue Monday” borrowed from Gerry & The Holograms’ eponymous 1979 A-side.

Comment

Olly Murs, 02

Katie Colombus Saturday, 01 April 2017

Olly Murs seems to have monopolised the market on teenage girls and their middle-aged mums - the ultimate X-Factor audience that's followed his journey from the show eight years ago.

theartsdesk on Vinyl 26: George Harrison, Vitalic, Scott Bradlee and more

Thomas H Green Friday, 31 March 2017

Record shops are now doing good business in the UK. Just five years ago, who’d have thought that could happen? So does the current fetishisation of vinyl mark a growing desire to be back to physical formats, rather than disembodied technologies?

Car Seat Headrest, Electric Ballroom

Javi Fedrick Monday, 27 March 2017

Seattle-based rockers Car Seat Headrest finally burst their cult bubble with their 13^th album, last year’s Teens of Denial, which found veteran songwriter Will Toledo combining Nineties indie, post-punk nihilism and ...

Reissue CDs Weekly: Wigwam

Kieron Tyler Sunday, 26 March 2017

Over 1972 to 1975, Finland staged a small-scale invasion of Britain. A friendly one, it was confined to music. First, the progressive rock band Tasavallan Presidentti came to London in May 1972 and played Ronnie Scott’s. The Sunday Times’ Derek Jewell said they were “frighteningly accomplished” and that readers should “watch them soar”.

Comment

Craig David, Brighton Centre

Thomas H Green Friday, 24 March 2017

Craig David’s two-hour show, in two parts, receives an ecstatic response in Brighton. The audience, dominated by women in their twenties, is loudly vocal in their appreciation, apparently knowing every word to every song on his six albums. It feels as if you might jump from the balcony, where I’m seated, and surf across the shimmying capacity crowd, buoyed up solely by the rising waves of love for this man.

Reissue CDs Weekly: Chuck Berry

Kieron Tyler Sunday, 19 March 2017

When a skiffle group called The Quarry Men played live in 1959, their repertoire included covers of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”. The folk-based skiffle was becoming rock. In 1960, when the same band became The Beatles, they added Berry’s “Carol” and “Little Queenie” to their set.

Comment

theartsdesk in Bergen: Questions upon questions at Borealis Festival

joe Muggs Tuesday, 14 March 2017

There comes a point in any experimental music festival when you have to accept the silliness and go with it. And at Borealis, that point comes very early.

Lula Pena, Café Oto

Peter Culshaw Monday, 13 March 2017

Lula Pena is a Portuguese singer who takes fado (or "phado" as she calls it) into new directions and musical horizons. She is one of the most intense performers you are likely to hear and, with only three albums in the last 20 years, keeps a lowish profile. She inspires fierce cult-like loyalty among fans, and had sold out the adventurous Café Oto, located in hipster central, Dalston.

Reissue CDs Weekly: Kitchens of Distinction

Kieron Tyler Sunday, 12 March 2017

Albums are not meant to be heard this way. Collecting a band's output in one package inevitably obscures that what’s being heard might have been recorded and released over years. The listening time may be five or six hours, but eighteen months could have separated albums when they were originally released. Messing with time messes with reality.

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