mon 23/06/2025

New Music Reviews

Album: Harp - Albion

Kieron Tyler

After leaving Midlake while recording their fourth album, Tim Smith said he was pursuing music under the name Harp. That was in 2012. Smith had been the Denton, Texas-based band’s singer and main songwriter. Without him, Midlake pushed on and issued 2013’s still-stunning Antiphon album.

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This Is The Kit, Barbican review - familiarity and charm

India Lewis

Coming at the end of a long year’s gigging, This Is The Kit’s performance at the Barbican on Saturday night was an excellent demonstration of the whole band’s familial, compelling musicianship.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret

Kieron Tyler

"Both of us have always enjoyed listening to dance music, and we wanted to interpret disco in our own way. We wanted to make good quality soulful electronic dance music, more biting than the usual bland disco stuff. We wanted to make records that would stand out in a disco and that you could listen to in your own bedroom."

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Nikki Iles featuring the NDR Bigband, EFG London Jazz Festival, Cadogan Hall review - boundless artistry in harmony

peter Quinn

When a musical jeweller with an imagination of remarkable aural refinement meets a jazz orchestra which combines playing of super-fine precision and warmth with a total commitment to the music’s singular ebb and flow, remarkable things can happen.

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Greta Van Fleet, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - all rock and very little roll

Jonathan Geddes

If nothing else, you couldn’t accuse Greta Van Fleet of short-changing fans when it came to costumes or pyro. It felt like every few minutes the Michigan throwback rockers frontman Josh Kiszka was disappearing offstage, only to reappear in a variety of jumpsuits or robes, while roasting flames regularly shot up from behind the four piece.

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EFG London Jazz Festival 2023 round-up review - vital sparks crossing and uniting generations

Sebastian Scotney

Start with the biggest gig of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival: Angélique Kidjo’s Royal Albert Hall show definitely stays in the mind. Part of the story is the earth-shaking power and resonance of the voice of the "Queen of African music" which transforms the Royal Albert Hall magically into an intimate space.

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Eurythmics Songbook Featuring Dave Stewart, London Palladium review - Annie Lennox would be proud

Liz Thomson

Well, wow. Just wow. At a time when there are fewer and fewer people I’m desperate to see live and so many of them are then disappointing, the celebration by Dave Stewart and friends of the Eurythmics catalogue, 40 years – 40 years! – after  “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” was thrilling. An exhilarating two hours of high-level musicianship brilliantly produced.

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Music Reissues Weekly: High Tide - The Complete Liberty Recordings

Kieron Tyler

High Tide were one of many late Sixties and early Seventies British bands unearthed in the early Eighties by record collectors digging into what came after psychedelia. The bands didn’t have similar musical styles but were united by their obscurity and having sold barely any copies of their albums. All were largely forgotten until their rediscovery. Ben, Gracious!, Pussy, Red Dirt, T2, more. Who were these bands? Who were High Tide?

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Christine Tobin, EFG London Jazz Festival, World Heart Beat review - an enchanting ode to home

peter Quinn

This UK premiere of the award-winning, Dublin-born vocalist and composer Christine Tobin’s latest project, Returning Weather, presented an otherworldly ode to finding home – casting multiple perspectives on our yearning for connection and human warmth.

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Sisters of Mercy, KK's Steel Mill, Wolverhampton review - Goth veterans return to the fray

Guy Oddy

Andrew Eldritch, vocalist and convent leader of the Sisters of Mercy, is a famously obtuse character. This may have made him seem somewhat mysterious over the years, but it has also meant that he has missed a few open goals too.

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