New Music Reviews
Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straightSaturday, 06 July 2024
It’s often said that nobody mythologised Billie Holiday like Billie Holiday. I’m not so sure. Read more... |
Album: Kiiōtō - As Dust we RiseSaturday, 06 July 2024
As Dust we Rise ends with “Quilt,” a percussion-driven lamentation bringing to mind the New Orleans stylings of Dr. John. The album begins with “Hem,” where stabbing piano and strings interweave with a pulsing, wordless chorale. After a while, a muted trumpet and pattering wood blocks fill it out. Read more... |
Glastonbury Festival 2024: A Sunlit Epic of Music, Madness, Chaos and CultureThursday, 04 July 2024
SUNDAY 30th June 2024 Read more... |
Sza, BST Hyde Park review - R&B superstar gives apocalyptic bug vibesMonday, 01 July 2024
If the holiday season has been lacking in sun so far in the UK, Sza bought the heat to the first Saturday of the iconic London summerfest in Hyde Park, set up by a strong afternoon of support acts from Sampha, Snoh Aalegra, Elmiene and No Guidnce. Read more... |
P!nk, Hampden Park, Glasgow review - a high-wire act with bravado and bombastMonday, 01 July 2024
There was a point in this stadium spectacular when P!nk gave her fans two choices. They could either “make out with their partners or go queue for a beer” she suggested, prior to one of the first slow-paced numbers of the evening, but the latter choice was a dangerous one. Few shows, even among big pop jamborees, feature as much going on as Alecia Moore’s current Summer Carnival jaunt. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Cluster - ZuckerzeitSunday, 30 June 2024
In 1974, two albums by German kosmiche musicians working with electronics became the first from the seedbed of what’d been dubbed Krautrock to explicitly embrace – and merge – melody and rhythmic structure. One was Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. The other was Cluster’s Zuckerzeit. Once on the record player, each LP instantly made its presence felt more directly than anything either had released previously. Read more... |
Taylor Swift, Wembley Stadium review - the Eras Tour lights up LondonWednesday, 26 June 2024
Unless you were around when The Beatles toured America in the mid-1960s, it’s doubtful you've heard anything like this. In 40 years of extensive gig-going, I have not. Taylor Swift has just performed “Champagne Problems” at the piano (pictured below), a song from Evermore, the second of her indie-folk flavoured COVID-era albums. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Cryin’ Shames - Please Stay, Do The Strum! - Joe Meek's Girl Groups and Pop ChanteusesSunday, 23 June 2024
Liverpool’s The Cryin’ Shames were responsible for two of mid-Sixties Britain’s most striking single’s tracks. The February 1966 top side “Please Stay” was so eerie, so wraithlike it came across as an attempt to channel the experience of making successful contact with a spirit presence. “Come on Back,” an unpolished September 1966 B-side, could pass for US garage punk at its most paint-peeling. Read more... |
Rain Parade, 229 review - the Paisley Underground perennials prove unafraid of their pastFriday, 21 June 2024
It kicks off with “No Easy Way Down.” First released on 1984’s mini-LP Explosions in the Glass Palace, it was an instant benchmark by which to measure Rain Parade. Churning, dense and foggy, it made good on what this California outfit were portrayed as: integral to a Sixties-inspired wave of bands defiantly reconfiguring the past for the present. Not all Rain Parade songs were like this, but “No Easy Way Down” was a head-spinner. It still is. Read more... |
The Master Musicians of Joujouka, Morocco review - a healing encounterTuesday, 18 June 2024
A small mountain village, tucked away in the foothills of the Rif Mountains, south-east of Tangier. The “smallest music festival in the world”, so it says in the Guinness Book of Records. But this remarkable musical event – more of an encounter than a performance – has none of the usual trappings of the larger events that populate our summers. Read more... |
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