New Music Reviews
Album: Pat Metheny – From This PlaceSaturday, 15 February 2020
From This Place (Nonesuch) is a complex, meticulously produced and many-layered album which demands concentrated and repeated listening. In many ways, it is all the better for it. Pat Metheny himself has written an essay or “Album Notes” of no fewer than 2,020 words to explain how the concept of the album evolved, as it went through a several-stage process of conception, recording, arranging, production. Read more...
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Angel Olsen, Eventim Apollo review - rock reinvention at its loudestWednesday, 12 February 2020
Angel Olsen’s show at the Eventim Apollo has been much hyped and publicised over the past weeks, an indie chanteuse reinventing herself, recasting herself with a darker, more rocky sound. Read more... |
The Hu, O2 Academy, Bristol review - heavy metal meets throat-singingWednesday, 12 February 2020
There is natural logic in the unholy marriage between heavy metal and Mongolian throat singing. Read more... |
Lonnie Holley, Cube, Bristol review - outsider with visionTuesday, 11 February 2020
Alabama-born Lonnie Holley, the seventh son of 27 children, more or less abandoned as a child, comes from a tradition of African-American visionaries who reach back through the generations to a culture of great aesthetic and ethical sophistication, one which the slaves’ horrific voyage across the Atlantic wasn’t able... Read more... |
Carly Rae Jepsen, Brixton Academy review - punchy, polished popTuesday, 11 February 2020
Few will forget back in 2012, when Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen came crashing into the airwaves of pretty much every pop station on the planet, with the sugary synth-pop sounds of Call Me Maybe. With a track as big as that – even Jepsen herself has said she was sick of hearing it on the radio – it would have been easy to assign the singer to one-hit-wonder status.... Read more... |
Album: Tame Impala - The Slow RushTuesday, 11 February 2020
And so, Tame Impala’s evolution from riff-laden psych-mongers to dancefloor-fillers is complete. It’s undeniable from the opening drum machine on “One More Year” supplanting Kevin Parker’s trademark kit-work. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Hank WilliamsSunday, 09 February 2020
Any knowledge of the Hank Williams narrative heavily influences how he is perceived. He died at age 29 on New Year’s Day 1953, in the back of a car while travelling to a show in Ohio. His schedule was punishing. A day earlier he had played in West Virginia but a storm meant he could not fly from one show to the next. Read more... |
Transatlantic Sessions, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - folk fusion from Burns to the bossSaturday, 08 February 2020
In its seventeenth incarnation, Transatlantic Sessions - a concert comprising music from some of the finest names in Scottish, Irish and American folk - had its penultimate night of its UK tour in a packed-out Symphony Hall, Birmingham on Friday evening. Read more... |
Jonas Brothers, SSE Hydro, Glasgow - reunited siblings look to the future with slick showFriday, 07 February 2020
No matter how much the Jonas Brothers try, they can’t totally escape the mouse. Commercials for new Disney TV shows flashed up onscreen not long before the siblings took to the stage, and although the trio’s days of appearing in such fare are long gone, it offered a brief reminder of where they began. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Aalborg: Northern Winter Beat 2020 reviewTuesday, 04 February 2020
U-Bahn’s second-ever live show outside their home country Australia took place in Aalborg, in Jutland, in the north of Denmark. They were in this congenial, routinely rain-sodden city last weekend for Northern Winter Beat, the annual festival of established, offbeat and up-and-coming musical adventurers. Read more... |
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