thu 12/06/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Al Stewart - Year Of The Cat

Kieron Tyler

At the end of 1976 Al Stewart talked to Melody Maker, contrasting how he was seen in America and the UK. He was in Los Angeles. “I haven’t played in England for nearly two years,” he told Harvey Kubernik. “The best way of looking at it was that I had Love Chronicles [his second album, issued in 1969], and I was getting a lot of good press.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities Volume 7

Kieron Tyler

Carolyn Crawford’s “Ready or Not Here Comes Love” is a 1971 recording.

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Psappha, Phillips, Hallé St Peter’s, Manchester online review - Turnage world premiere

Robert Beale

Manchester’s Psappha have been proudly flying the flag of new and radical music right through the year of lockdown, and last night’s livestream, with two-and-a-half world premieres, one of them by...

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Album: Teenage Fanclub‎ - Endless Arcade

Kieron Tyler

A few hurdles need jumping before grappling with the essence of Teenage Fanclub’s 11th album. Endless Arcade is their first without bassist and founder member Gerard Love. He, alongside Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, was one of the band’s songwriters.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies

Kieron Tyler

Lazer Guided Melodies was great. It still is. Spiritualized’s debut album built from what was already there in Jason Pierce’s previous band Spacemen 3 and took it into newer, more textured territory. While softer-focussed and more dynamic than Spacemen 3 there was still an edge, a brittle carapace which ensured Spiritualized was its own thing.

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Album: Field Music - Flat White Moon

Kieron Tyler

Although it is not solipsistic, Flat White Moon is Field Music’s most personal, most revealing, warmest-sounding album so far. David and Peter Brewis have opened up. Their ninth studio album together opens with a seeming declaration. “Orion from the Street” has a drum pattern, bubbling, whooshing sounds and weaving, treated guitar unambiguously alluding to The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: T2 - It'll All Work Out In Boomland

Kieron Tyler

It'll All Work Out In Boomland was issued by Decca at the end of July 1970. A poor seller at the time, it began attracting attention in the mid-Eighties when prices for original copies began creeping up. Around 2000, it was picking up about £100.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Wes Montgomery - The NDR Hamburg Studio Recordings

Kieron Tyler

Speaking to America’s Hit Parader magazine in August 1967, Frank Zappa said “If you want to learn how to play guitar, listen to Wes Montgomery.” The article was titled My Favorite Records and the head Mother was being featured shortly after the release of Absolutely Free, the second Mothers Of Invention...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Tame Impala - InnerSpeaker (2010➝2020)

Kieron Tyler

Heard now, InnerSpeaker sounds as it did when it was issued in 2010. Tame Impala’s debut album was crisp, fizzing; a pithy collection of psychedelic rock nuggets which made its case instantly. This was modern psychedelia, infused with a dash of Sweden’s Dungen, which still sounds fresh. Despite brushing the borders of freak-out territory, it was direct. Tuneful too. Fantastic.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 63: KMFDM, Laurie Anderson, Seratones, The Telescopes, Black Sabbath, Conrad Schnitzler and more

Thomas H Green

Rumours keep swirling of pressing plants stumped by the effects of COVID-19 lockdown, and it’s true that vinyl editions of many albums have been delayed, yet still those records keep arriving. At theartsdesk on Vinyl, no-one cares if an album was streaming or out in virtual form months ago.

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