New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: Folque, Undertakers CircusSunday, 12 June 2016
The names may be unfamiliar, but Folque and Undertakers Circus are as good as better-known bands. Despite being musical bedfellows neither Norwegian band is as esteemed as, say, Trader Horne and Trees or Colloseum and Lighthouse. Folque issued their eponymous debut album in 1974. Despite line-up changes, the band was active until 1984. Undertakers Circus issued two albums, the first of which was 1973’s Ragnarock. The original band ran out of steam around 1976. Read more... |
AC/DC, Olympic Stadium, Queen Elizabeth ParkMonday, 06 June 2016
The accepted wisdom from last month's relaunched Rock or Bust tour was that the substitution of Axl Rose for incapacitated singer Brian Johnson was as masterful as it was surprising. Whatever the Guns N' Roses man lacked in mischief, the story went, he made up for with malevolent energy. Now, though, it's been over a month of the new band. So is Axl still brimming with curdled anger? Read more... |
Malcolm Middleton, The LexingtonSunday, 05 June 2016
The Scottish singer-songwriter Malcolm Middleton has always had a restless creativity, right back to his days in the Bukowskian indie duo Arab Strap. He announced a few years ago that he was sick of playing solo gigs, expected to strum an acoustic guitar and delve into his mordant back catalogue. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Adam and the AntsSunday, 05 June 2016
Adam Ant was one of the few who saw Sex Pistols’ first live show. On 6 November 1975, his band Bazooka Joe was playing Charing Cross Road’s St Martin’s School of Art. They found an uninvited support band had gatecrashed the evening. The impact of the interlopers on the then Stuart Goddard wasn’t instant, but he would go on to form The B-Sides and, then, Adam and the Ants, whose manager became Jordan, who worked at Malcolm McLaren’s King’s Road shop SEX. Read more... |
John Cale, Festival of Voice, CardiffSaturday, 04 June 2016
“Are you enjoying Wales, John?” shouts a fan, eventually. Our returning hero has remained taciturn and all but static at his keyboard throughout an epic show that spans one of popular music’s most interesting and influential careers. Cale affects to have misheard. “Am I rejoining Wales?” he ponders. “I certainly hope so. I feel like I’m rejoining every time I’m here.” Read more... |
Common People Festival 2016, SouthamptonTuesday, 31 May 2016
Rob da Bank’s Faustian pact with the weather gods continues apace with the second year of Common People, which takes place simultaneously in Southampton and Oxford. The forecast for days beforehand had predicted a cold front bearing relentless drizzle but, in the event, wellies were left packed away as the elements chose instead to offer blazing summer sunshine for the 30,000 revellers who attended the festival's second day at Southampton. Read more... |
Brighton Festival: Beth Orton, Attenborough Centre for Creative ArtsSunday, 29 May 2016
Beth Orton’s sparsely ethereal new collection Kidsticks has been well received for marking an interesting change of direction. Last night’s Brighton Festival gig gave audiences the best of both, beginning with most of the new songs, then climaxing with some old favourites that evoked her rockier past. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Death and VanillaSunday, 29 May 2016
Last May, Malmö trio Death and Vanilla issued the To Where the Wild Things are album and it seemed they had arrived as a fully formed post-Broadcast proposition, harmoniously fusing vintage influences like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Italian giallo soundtracks and The United States of America. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 17 - Paul McCartney, Moby, Grace Jones and moreSaturday, 28 May 2016
News just in that the vinyl soundtrack to Star Wars: The Force Awakens will feature holograms that can seen as the record is played, if a light is shone upon it. It seems that every month there’s a similarly bizarre development in the many ways that vinyl is returning to the public eye. It’s now commonplace for Graham Norton to introduce the musical guests on his TV show by waving about a vinyl copy of their new album, something unthinkable even a year ago. Read more... |
The Burning Hell, OsloWednesday, 25 May 2016
“We’ve been visiting libraries on this tour and it’s a lot of fun learning people still read.” The words of The Burning Hell’s main man Mathias Kom before launching into “Give Up” stress he and his band are not typical rock‘n’rollers. “Give Up” itself is the rollicking song-story of a call-centre worker who goes to a library, finds inspiration in Herman Melville and then meets a mysterious woman who rings in. She gives him a poster of a kitten captioned “Never Give Up”. Read more... |
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