wed 11/06/2025

New Music Reviews

The 2009 Mercury Music Prize: And the winner is...

Robert Sandall Speech Debelle: Speech Therapy

Speech Debelle – and she for one is not surprised. In a feisty speech accepting her nomination for the £20,000 prize, given annually to the best British album of the year, the 25-year-old rapper from South London warned the other 11 acts on the shortlist ahead of last night’s judgment that she planned “to take this one home”. By 10.20 last night the panel of judges agreed that she should, making Debelle the third female solo artist to win the Mercury in this century, following PJ Harvey in 2001...

Read more...

Pastels-Tenniscoats, Bush Hall

joe Muggs

Artists who are naturally awkward in their own skin can go in a number of directions. Many, including a good number of The Pastels' 1980s “C86” indie contemporaries, are content to simply be musically awkward, shambolic and ultimately rather pathetic and self-defeating. Others like, say, Talking Heads' David Byrne, charged with hyperactivity, take their awkwardness to the Nth degree and used it as a drive towards diverse creative explorations.

Read more...

Proms 70 and 71: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

What exactly is the point of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies? I don't ask this with any malice or hostility, just in a tone of inquiry. It is a question that I think his new Violin Concerto, Fiddler on the Shore, raises. That is, is Davies still here to shock and annoy, or to assuage? The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Davies's baton presented the British premiere of the work last night, with Daniel Hope as the soloist, in the first of two proms that...

Read more...

Dot Allison, Rough Trade East

joe Muggs

Dot Allison was one of the true idols of my late teens.

Read more...

Beatles For (Multiplatform) Sale

Adam Sweeting

Oasis have split up, but The Beatles keep getting bigger. This week, in a synchronised splurge of Beatle product of almost D-Day like proportions, their complete remastered albums are being reissued, the group appear in virtual form in the computer game The Beatles: Rock Band, and the BBC continues the Beatles Week which kicked off in a blaze of Kleenex-moistening nostalgia on Saturday.

Read more...

Fol Chen, Brixton Windmill

howard Male Fol Chen

Why do Fol Chen make me feel so happy? To begin with it was just a smile that crept across my face when I stumbled across their barmy animated video for "No Wedding Cake". This mini-epic features a lip-synching fish, some lion-headed dancing girls, and an owl that ends up stealing the bleeding heart of a goat-horned man. Another promo, for the sprightly "...

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages

The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a...

Album: Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts

Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first...

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review - Nick...

It’s a sign of the inroads that the term “immersive” has made in theatreland that it now gets jokily namedropped at the...

Saul, Glyndebourne review - playful, visually ravishing desc...

This thrilling production of Saul takes Handel’s dramatisation of the Bible’s first Book of Samuel and paints it in...

theartsdesk at the Dublin International Chamber Music Festiv...

If, like me, chamber music isn’t your most frequent home, there are bound to be revelations of what for many are known masterpieces. Mine in...

Album: Marina - Princess of Power

Marina Diamandis is a proper pop star, brilliantly full-on...

The Gold, Series 2, BBC One review - back on the trail of th...

The first series of The Gold in 2023 was received rapturously, though apparently it only told one half of the story of the 1983 Brink’s-...

Eva Quartet, St Cyprian's review - polyphonic bliss

Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who...

Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Personal History

In those seemingly long-ago times of loneliness and lockdown, artists around the world invited us into their kitchens and living rooms as they...