tue 16/09/2025

New Music Reviews

Hailey Tuck, Rich Mix review - delightful but wobbly

Matthew Wright

At the age of 18, Texan jazz singer Hailey Tuck cashed in her college fund for a one-way plane ticket. leaving a military boarding school in Texas for the Voltaire district of Paris, to immerse herself in jazz clubs and vintage markets. Nearly a decade on, which she’s divided between the performance spaces of Paris, France, and Austin, Texas, her old-school approach to learning her craft has paid off...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Yung Wu

Kieron Tyler

When Crazy Rhythms, the ever-fabulous first album by New Jersey’s Feelies was issued in April 1980 it seemed to have little local context. Although the band’s fidgetiness suggested a kinship with Talking Heads and there were a clear nods to The Velvet Underground, it felt more of a piece with contemporary British post-punk bands Josef K and The Monochrome Set than anything American. Fittingly, Eno's first two solo offerings also  fed into the album.

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Problem in Brighton, Brighton Festival review - comic but patchy rock show

Thomas H Green

Problem is Brighton is down in the Festival programme as an “alt-rock/pop pantomime”, with actors involved and the inference it’s some sort of musical featuring “instruments specially created by David Shrigley for the performance”. This turns out to be seriously over-selling it. In fact, Problem in Brighton is a...

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Pinkshinyultrablast, Band on the Wall, Manchester - glitch-pop madness from Russia’s finest

Javi Fedrick

Pinkshinyultrablast might be a long way from their hometown of St Petersburg, but in recent years they’ve built themselves up in England as one of the more bizarre and original bands in today’s psych/shoegaze revival, and on the day their third album Miserable Miracles is released, they hit the north for a night...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Burning Britain

Kieron Tyler

In early March 1980, the weekly music paper Sounds dedicated their front cover to “the new face of punk” with a photograph of Stinky Turner, the singer of The Cockney Rejects. What had, in 1977, been widely interpreted as a challenge to musical orthodoxy and as a new broom which was sweeping clean had, in turn, become a default style for new waves of bands.

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Anna Meredith, Southbank Sinfonia, QEH review - triumphant genre-busting treat

Bernard Hughes

I’m not sure what exactly this event was – orchestral concert, electronic dance music gig or multimedia extravaganza – but however you define it, I loved every mad minute.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Julian Cope

Kieron Tyler

In terms of chart statistics, Julian Cope’s period with Island Records looks pretty good. He issued four albums with the label and all of them charted. Saint Julian (issued in March 1987) peaked at 11, My Nation Underground (October 1988) stalled at 42 but Peggy Suicide (March 1991) and Jehovakill (October 1992) climbed to 23 and 20 respectively. Not bad.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: New York Dolls

Kieron Tyler

Playing Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on 8 September 1974, the New York Dolls opened their first set of the evening with three cover versions. Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man” was followed by The Shangri-Las’ “(Give Him a) Great Big Kiss” and Otis Redding’s “Don’t Mess With Cupid”. They were acknowledging that blues, girl group records and soul were integral to who they were.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2018

Thomas H Green

Record Store Day 2018 – Saturday April 21 – is upon us. It should really be Record Shop Day 2018 as this is the UK but let’s not quibble. Instead, put aside cynicism about major labels cashing in, wander down to the nearest record shop – and, happily, new record shops are starting to pop up a lot lately – then rifle through the racks.

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Roy Orbison In Dreams Hologram, Eventim Apollo review - it's a gig, Jim, but not as we know it

Russ Coffey

On Wednesday night, the music world took a small step closer to the realms of science fiction. Roy Orbison, 30 years dead, stood in front of a packed Hammersmith Apollo. It wasn't a resurrection, of course, but a hologram, and a damn fine one. Virtual Roy wiggled, turned around and occasionally thanked the audience.

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