mon 08/09/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Spooky Tooth

Kieron Tyler

 

Spooky Tooth: The Island Years (An Anthology) 1967–1974Spooky Tooth: The Island Years (An Anthology) 1967–1974

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Squarepusher, Brighton Dome

Thomas H Green

There’s an odd duality about Brighton tonight. Post-election, it’s a righteous oasis, a green and red bubble amid a sea of blue. Most of Britain may have chosen to systematically destroy the NHS and the education system but Brighton stands fast.

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Hoobastank, P.O.D., Alien Ant Farm, KOKO

Lydia Perrysmith

It was a strange atmosphere inside Camden’s KOKO last night, like a very particular nu metal subgroup of 2003 having a reunion. There was no one under the age of 20 but there were still dreadlocks and beards aplenty. First up on this nostalgia-fest were Alien Ant Farm, the American rock band who formed in 1995 in Riverside, California. By the time the band come out on stage, the crowd has had time to buy a few warm, over-priced beers and are ready to let loose.

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The Prodigy, O2 Academy, Birmingham

Guy Oddy

The over-full O2 Academy is already like a sauna, with sweat dripping down the walls and clouds of condensation drifting above the audience, before the Prodigy even take to the stage in Birmingham. However, when a fur-coated MC Maxim leads the band out the atmosphere goes up several notches further and then positively explodes as Liam Howlett lays down the intro to 1997’s hit single “Breath”.

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Laura Moody, The Old Church, Stoke Newington

Russ Coffey

The venues Laura Moody has played on this, her first national tour, have included a launderette, a lighthouse, and the philosophy section of a well-known Oxford bookshop – all, apparently, selected for their “intimate and unusual” quality. It's certainly been an odd couple of months. On the other hand Acrobats, the album she featured last night, seemed a little more mainstream than her previous material. 

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The Warlocks, Rainbow, Birmingham

Guy Oddy

The Warlocks are a psychedelic band from LA who dress not unlike the Velvet Underground in their prime and are clearly not given to star-like behaviour. They slope onto the stage at Birmingham’s Rainbow, tune up and burst straight into “Red Camera” from their 2009 album The Mirror Explodes. A heavy, dense mediation that comes on like a deep, Spacemen 3-flavoured drone, it whacks up the volume and sets the tone for the evening.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Eurovision 2015

Kieron Tyler

 

Building Bridges Eurovision Song Contest  Vienna 2015Various Artists: Building Bridges - Eurovision Song Contest Vienna 2015

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San Fermin, Jazz Café

Matthew Wright

San Fermin have enough brass to rock Mardi Gras and the vocal range to stretch an opera chorus, but they are, still, a pop group. The Brooklyn indie octet’s straight-through rendition of their second album Jackrabbit, released last week, inspired the Jazz Café on Monday night, their obliquely hyperactive compositions, by Yale graduate and Nico Muhly associate Ellis Ludwig-Leone, decked in the gaudy distractions of the carnival.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Dion

Kieron Tyler

 

Dion Recorded Live at the Bitter End August 1971Dion: Recorded Live at the Bitter End August 1971

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The Fall, Brixton Electric

Tim Cumming

They begin with “My Door is Never” from 2007 album Reformation Post TLC, and close a little over an hour later with “Sparta FC”, from early in the century, and from a long-gone Fall line-up. In between, a flurry of blurred, brutal songs from the new and most recent albums set about pummelling a packed house at the Brixton Electric.

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