New Music Reviews
theartsdesk on Vinyl Christmas Special 2020: Donna Summer, Tom Sanders, The Kinks, Tru Thoughts, Spice Girls, Style Council and moreFriday, 11 December 2020
The music year draws to a close and theartsdesk on Vinyl presents its festive selection. We go easier on the cheesier at this time of year, but there are also gold nuggets in there too. Time to buy the vinyl lover in your life a little something? Read more... |
Album: Jamie Cullum - The Pianoman at ChristmasWednesday, 09 December 2020
Island Records were apparently keen for half of Jamie Cullum’s first Christmas album to consist of covers, but the singer/songwriter thought otherwise, and simply said no.“When you think of all the people who have recorded “The Christmas Song” [...]”, he has said, “why should I do the same thing?” Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Scars - Author! Author!Sunday, 06 December 2020
Scars’s tour de force album Author! Author! has been out of sight for too long. Originally released in 1981, it first reappeared on a swiftly withdrawn CD in 2007. Apparently, there were issues about where the rights for its reissue lay. Now, it has re-emerged. Read more... |
Mary Chapin Carpenter, One Night Lonely livestream review - down-home and perfectly pacedWednesday, 02 December 2020
Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Songs from Home has been an anchor-point almost since the beginning of lockdown for many people, all of us invited into the singer’s sun-dappled Virginia farmhouse, often the kitchen, where, accompanied by Angus the most golden of retrievers, she chats and sings. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 61: Amy Winehouse, Krust, Motörhead, Extrawelt, Sade, Chase and Status and moreTuesday, 01 December 2020
Welcome to the penultimate 2020 edition of the world’s vastest, most musically wide-ranging, regularly posted, online vinyl reviews. This year vinyl boomed, especially in the wake of COVID-19, with gig-goers stuck at home but wanting new music. 2020’s sales are now heading for the £100 million mark, vinyl’s biggest year since 1990. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Trees - 50th Anniversary box setSunday, 29 November 2020
Fifty years after their first album The Garden Of Jane Delawney was issued in April 1970, Trees seem to be better known than when they were active. Despite Françoise Hardy’s cover version of the title track a couple of years after it hit shops, the UK band’s debut album was a poor seller. Original pressings fetch upwards of £200. It’s the same with its follow-up, January 1971’s On The Shore... Read more... |
Dua Lipa's Studio 2054 online - pop sensation locked into the spectacleSunday, 29 November 2020
As with so much in these unprecedented times, online performance is evolving, and fast: different approaches are becoming established formats. Some go ultra intimate – raw acoustic performances, live chats with fans – as if trying to strip away the digital divide. Big, serious rock bands with like Metallica and Radiohead try to keep their established fanbases sated with sheer volume of professionally recorded archive performance. Read more... |
Arena - Fela Kuti: Father of Afrobeat, BBC Two review - the music that never diesSunday, 22 November 2020
There have been Felabrations, stage musicals, bands featuring his sons Seun and Femi that have continued the legacy. There has been the slew of re-releases from his massive catalogue, and a number of films, including Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, and the 1982 classic, Music is the Weapon. In his afterlife, the legendary Fela Kuti and his music feels more alive than ever. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Do You Have The Force - Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of ElectronicaSunday, 22 November 2020
“During 1975, 1976 and the first half of 1977 punk was the future but, after the highpoint of ‘God Save the Queen’, London punk already seemed spent. By the time that the Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ was tumbling out of the charts in early September, there had been two huge hits that changed the way I heard music. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Slaughter and the Dogs - Do It Dog StyleSunday, 15 November 2020
Manchester’s Slaughter and the Dogs were perfect for 1977. In May, their debut single “Cranked up Really High” sported bee-in-a-jar guitar, a hoarse vocal and an unstoppable forward motion. Read more... |
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