thu 22/05/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Simple Minds

Kieron Tyler

As the album featuring Simple Minds’ first Top Twenty single, “Promised You a Miracle”, 1982’s New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) was aptly titled. After the success of the next single “Glittering Prize”, it hit number three in the album charts. Five albums in and three years after their first single, Simple Minds were indeed touching gold.

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Prom 19: David Bowie Prom

Jasper Rees

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” sang John Cale in the droning voice of Major Tom. Whether the spirit of David Bowie was indeed hovering over the Albert Hall for this impromptu memorial late-night Prom is not easily answered. The shape-shifting Bowie who stayed ahead of the game was honoured in a set lasting nearly two hours and covering 47 years of music-making from 1969 to 2016.

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Detroit: Techno City, Institute of Contemporary Arts

joe Muggs

Detroit techno music is important. Any student of the club music of the modern age knows this. The sound that fermented among the majority black population of the decaying industrial city in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as disco's last remnants fused with the avant-garde experiments of Europeans who were first getting their hands on synthesisers and drum machines, went on to change the world.

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FEWS, Prince Albert, Brighton

Thomas H Green

The indie scene isn’t currently enjoying a peak period but FEWS’ debut album, Means, which came out a couple of months back, makes as close a case for tight, post-punk guitar songs played by skinny guys as anything released this year. Part of this is undoubtedly down to producer Dan Carey, whose work with multiple acts, from Bat For Lashes to Kate Tempest to Bloc Party, shows he knows how to capture the best of an artist.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 19 - Sisters of Mercy, Peter Gabriel, Solomun and more

Thomas H Green

This month we’re just going to get straight into it. It’s summer, the sun's out, no time for waffle, just slap a disc on the turntables and wallow in the richness of the sound. Below 42 vinyl releases are reviewed, with no genre boundaries maintained. There should be something there for everyone. Dig in.

Eerie Eerie (Tee Pee)

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Bitori, Space Echo

Kieron Tyler

Since achieving international success in the final years of the 1980s, the late Cesária Évora has dominated much of globe’s perception of music from the Cape Verde (officially Cabo Verde). This fascinating pair of releases reveal other aspects which may not have caused similar world-wide waves. Crucially, they're hugely enjoyable.

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Becca Stevens Band, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

Matthew Wright

Becca Stevens’ limpid, luscious and artful fusion of Appalachian folk, jazz and indie rock found a perfectly empathetic setting in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, in an inspired choice for Lauren Laverne’s Wonder Women series of summer gigs. Stevens’ band began honing their connoisseur's stylistic melting pot more than a decade ago, and has been a fixture on the New York scene for some years. As she begins to make a name over here, British audiences are due for a treat.  

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Hollywood Brats

Kieron Tyler

July last year saw the publication of Sick on You: The Disastrous Story of Britain’s Great Lost Punk Band, Andrew Matheson’s chronicle of his band The Hollywood Brats. The essential book was impossible to put down. It took in picaresque encounters with Sixties pop star and songwriter-turned impresario Chris Andrews, Andrew Loog Oldham, Keith Moon, Cliff Richard, a pre-Sex Pistols Malcolm McLaren and more.

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Stevie Wonder, Hyde Park BST Festival

Sebastian Scotney

Sixty-five thousand people came to Wonder. The final night of British Summer Time in Hyde Park was a sell-out. With a performance lasting four hours including an intermission, the Detroit-born legend and his band – and also the weather, which stayed fine all evening - can have left nobody disappointed. The show, based on the album Songs in the Key of Life, with some extra off-piste excursions, was thoroughly convincing live. It just works very well, and on several levels. 

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Mumford & Sons, Hyde Park BST Festival

Markie Robson-Scott

At Mumford & Sons’ air-punchingly rousing concert at the Hyde Park festival, thoughts of Brexit start to intrude. Those “Little Lion Man” lyrics, for example – so apposite, surely.  “Weep for yourself, my man/You'll never be what is in your heart/Weep, little lion man/You're not as brave as you were at the start… I really fucked it up this time.” And those giant inflatable bananas that people are waving – is that a subtle reference to EU fruit quality standardisation?

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