New Music Reviews
Rag‘n’Bone Man, Jazz Café review – powerful first post-lockdown gigThursday, 01 July 2021
Rory Graham’s first words as he comes on stage are: “Well this is a bit weird, isn't it? It's been a while.” After a run of cancelled gigs, the band haven’t performed live for a year and a half – which feels, says Rory, “a bit like missing a testicle.” Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 65: Solomun, Black Sabbath, Trojan Records, The Creation, Seefeel, Motörhead and moreThursday, 01 July 2021
The latest edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl combines the best new sounds on plastic with the vinyl reissues that are pressing buttons. Ranging from heavy rockin’ book-style boxsets to the funkiest summertime 7”s, all musical life is here. Dive in. VINYL OF THE MONTH This Is The Deep The Best Is Yet To Come (Part 1) (B3) Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Elton John - Regimental Sgt. ZippoSunday, 27 June 2021
Empty Sky, Elton John’s first album was released in June 1969. Now, an album titled Regimental Sgt. Zippo has turned up. It’s marketed as “The debut album that never was.” The 12 tracks are annotated loosely as having been recorded from November 1967 to May 1968. Read more... |
Album: John Grant - Boy From MichiganWednesday, 23 June 2021
While recognisably a John Grant album, Boy From Michigan brings on board something new and unprecedented – an outside producer. Welcome, Cate Le Bon. Among her previous production credits are Deerhoof and Tim Presley, whom she’s collaborated with on an album. As these and her own releases attest, she’s not going to steer anyone towards the mainstream. Read more... |
Young Pilgrims, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review – raucous jazz rockers whip up a stormMonday, 21 June 2021
With a third wave of Covid-19 being widely predicted in the media and the UK live music scene still not back on its feet after the last one, audiences must take their gigs however they are served up. Given the news coverage, I admit to having visions of the Hare and Hounds being set up like a school examinations room, but in the event it was not so bad. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Dungen - StadsvandringarSunday, 20 June 2021
Dungen’s October 2005 appearance on Late Night With Conan O'Brien was incongruous. Here was a Swedish band on an independent label, singing in their native language, playing live on coast-to-coast mainstream US TV. The show’s host making a great play in his intro of trying to pronounce their name compounded the sense that this was a band of outsiders which had been mistakenly invited to the banquet. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Screamers - Demo Hollywood 1977Sunday, 13 June 2021
In its first issue of 1979, Melody Maker included an article by Jon Savage on a Los Angeles band named Screamers. “They're ambitious, talented and they want it all NOW,” he wrote. Read more... |
Album: Julian Lage – SquintSaturday, 12 June 2021
Expectations are high with Julian Lage; they always have been. The guitarist is one of the special ones: born on Christmas Day (1987)...appearing with Carlos Santana at age seven... a documentary made about him at eight...clocked by Gary Burton at the Grammy awards at the cusp of his teens...and performing in Burton’s group at an age when he still needed parental chaperoning. Read more... |
Dark Days, Luminous Nights, Manchester Collective, The White Hotel, Salford review - a sense of HadesTuesday, 08 June 2021
Did you wonder what all those creative musicians and artists did when they couldn’t perform in public last winter? Some of them started making films. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Donovan - Hurdy Gurdy SongsSunday, 06 June 2021
Early last month, Donovan issued his extraordinary new single “I am the Shaman”. Recorded at David Lynch’s Los Angeles studio, it was produced by the polymath director and fellow transcendental meditation devotee. The accompanying video was also directed by Lynch. The powerful “I am the Shaman” haunts. It also confirms that Donovan remains an active force. Read more... |
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