New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: FotheringaySunday, 05 April 2015![]()
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theartsdesk on Vinyl Volume 4: Motorhead, Adrian Sherwood and moreSunday, 05 April 2015![]()
Record Store Day – 18 April – has been whipping up discord among independent labels. Notably, Sonic Cathedral are boycotting it, instead releasing 365 copies of an EP by Spectres and Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, one a day, over the next year. Read more... |
Wolf Alice, Shepherd's Bush EmpireSaturday, 04 April 2015![]()
They’ve yet to release an album, but the London-based, alt-rock four-piece Wolf Alice have already been called everything from shoegrunge to Brit-country, via indie-dance and riot-grrrl. Last night they gave another compelling display of musical shape-shifting, which demonstrated why they’re known for seeming not to know what they are. Read more... |
CD: Brian Wilson – No Pier PressureSaturday, 04 April 2015![]()
There are certain things that you approach a Brian Wilson album expecting. Melody and harmony of course, but also a certain kind of approach: a fearlessness to experiment. When he finally completed the famously unfinished Smile in 2004, it was a landmark moment (though not, if we’re honest, as satisfying as the old demo versions). Read more... |
Just in From Scandinavia: Nordic Music Round-Up 13Thursday, 02 April 2015![]()
Very often, the greatest impact comes without shouting. Subtlety can have a power lingering longer than the two-minute thrill of a yell. So it is with Bridges, the eighth album by Eivør. In the past, the Faroese singer-songwriter has collaborated with Canada’s Bill Bourne, the Danish Radio Big Band and Ireland’s Donal Lunny, and taken turns into country and jazz. Read more... |
Future Islands, RoundhouseWednesday, 01 April 2015![]()
It’s been just over a year since Future Islands’ Samuel T Herring famously gyrated, and chest-thumped his way through the band's latest single on American TV. The show was Letterman and the singer looked like a stevedore undergoing primal scream therapy. Within days the footage had gone viral. People have been talking about it ever since. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The SpecialsSunday, 29 March 2015![]()
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The Subways, Institute, BirminghamTuesday, 24 March 2015![]()
Not unreasonably, anyone might imagine that a band might lose a bit of their usual vigour if they found themselves four albums into their career playing in a room not much bigger than a church hall, miles from home on a cold Monday evening. Not so the Subways. Read more... |
Ian McCulloch, St Pauls Arts Centre, WorthingSunday, 22 March 2015![]()
Things do not start well. Ian McCulloch, in trademark shades, apparently not aged a jot since Echo & the Bunnymen’s 1980s glory days, hits the stage in an offensive strop. He is performing a solo acoustic set from a chair. Beside him on a table sit a glass of water, a glass of milk and another glass with – at a guess – vodka and cranberry juice. He has the demeanour of a diva who’s been having a “party” in their changing room. Milk is good for settling an acid stomach. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Odyssey - A Northern Soul Time CapsuleSunday, 22 March 2015![]()
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