mon 10/02/2025

New Music Reviews

Music Reissues Weekly: Moving Away from the Pulsebeat - Post-Punk Britain 1977-1981

Kieron Tyler

“Moving Away from the Pulsebeat” is the final track – barring the locked-groove return of the two-note guitar refrain from “Boredom” – of Buzzcocks’ March 1978 debut album, Another Music In A Different Kitchen. At five minutes 40 seconds it didn’t cleave to the short, sharp punk template. Also, it was largely instrumental. And it had a drum solo.

Read more...

Deap Vally, Concorde 2, Brighton review - final blow-out before the rockin' duo quit

Thomas H Green

Towards the end of the encore, Deap Vally bring on their friend Solon Bixler. Frontwoman Lindsey Troy hands him her guitar. Despite this being their farewell tour, these two songs, she tells us, are new. The duo, now briefly a trio, go ballistic, a punk rock explosion ensues. Drummer Julie Edwards attacks her kit like Animal from The Muppets, Troy stomps like a glam rock loon before rolling about the floor, and Bixler scissor-kicks his way to stand aloft the bass drum.

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Beatles - Stowe School 1963

Kieron Tyler

“We hope if you like it, you'll buy it,” says Paul McCartney. It’s 4 April 1963 and The Beatles are on stage and about to perform their third single “From Me to You.” It’s out in a week.

To his left, John Lennon instantly responds to the entreaty. “And if you don't like it,” he retorts. “Don't buy it.”

Read more...

Beth Gibbons, Salle Pleyel, Paris review - a triumph of intimacy

mark Kidel

Beth Gibbons, once the voice of Portishead, and later a wonderful solo singer and songwriter, hasn’t been on stage for a long while. She makes the most of a paradoxical yet magical mix of being at once fleeting and totally present.

Read more...

The Lovely Eggs, XOYO, Birmingham review - Lancashire duo brings the Bank Holiday to a speedy end

Guy Oddy

When the Lovely Eggs’ married duo of Holly Ross and David Blackwell took to the stage at the recently rebranded XOYO in Birmingham on Bank Holiday Monday, they looked like they should be playing for two completely separate bands. She was looking glam, dressed like a guitar wielding Rόisín Murphy, with a blonde bob and orange and black tiger print dress, while he slid behind his drum kit in a washed-out tour t-shirt and a Johnny Ramone haircut.

Read more...

Travels Over Feeling: The Music of Arthur Russell, Barbican review - a sublime evening undercut by tonal shifts

India Lewis

Last night’s Travels Over Feeling: The Music of Arthur Russell (a concert in part accompanying the recent publication of a book about his life by Richard King) was a brilliant way to honour the legacy of a fascinating, challenging, and sublime musician who, largely unrecognised in his lifetime, is now loved by many. The tribute was truly moving (reader, I cried twice), but a tonal shift towards the end, whilst enjoyed by many, was a little jarring.

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Jon Savage's The Secret Public - How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture

Kieron Tyler

Jon Savage's The Secret Public How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture 1955-1979 accompanies the titular author/historian/journalist’s book of almost the same name. The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) and this 41-track double CD each track exactly what their titles say, drilling into what has often paralleled or underlain yet repeatedly influenced a constantly evolving mainstream.

Read more...

Album: Samana - Samana

Kieron Tyler

The final track of Samana’s third album is titled “The Preselis,” after the west Welsh mountain range – the place antiquarians suggested as the source of Stonehenge’s blue stones. The song’s opening lyrics are “The blue stones, they grow over me, Carved into mountains, the blood of need.” Later, the words “anima” and “animus” are repeated before the song ends with the recurring refrain “Lay the body down.”

Read more...

The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - 12 hours on the musical frontline of Day Three

Caspar Gomez

If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Andwella - To Dream

Kieron Tyler

Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can sometimes also be found for £700, a relative bargain in the context of the upper limit of the prices the collector’s market has settled on.

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...

The Years, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a bravura, joyous...

Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical book Les Années charts a woman’s life across time and space, history and memory, through...

Gilliver, Liverman, Rangwanasha, LSO, Pappano, Barbican revi...

For all its passing British sea shanties and folksongs, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony does Walt Whitman’s determinedly global-oriented...

theartsdesk Q&A: Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof on...

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is now an Oscar-nominated refugee, in a bittersweet harvest for his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig....

Nina Conti: Whose Face Is It Anyway?, Brighton Dome review -...

“I really am the repository for all your shit,” Nina Conti’s famous Monkey hand puppet tells her. Monkey may have a point.

The brilliance of...

Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Fernandes, Gent, 229 review - a beguil...

It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper...

Phaedra + Minotaur, Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre...

Greek myths are all over theatre stages at the moment, their fierce, vengeful stories offering unnerving parallels with events in our modern world...

Cyndi Lauper, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - still having chaot...

Cyndi Lauper was preceded onstage by a brief video that zipped through her career, which she drily declared was just in case someone was at the...

Music Reissues Weekly: Beggars Arkive - The Lurkers’ 1978 Jo...

On its own, the second session The Lurkers recorded for the BBC’s John Peel show on 18 April 1978 is arguably a curio, a footnote. Four tracks of...

Manchester Collective, RNCM review - something special in ne...

When a piece of music is heard for the first time ever, there’s always the delicious hope that, just by being there, an audience might witness...