mon 23/12/2024

New Music Reviews

Music Reissues Weekly: Judex - Cult of Judex

Kieron Tyler

A compilation album titled Pennsylvania Unknowns was issued in 1982. Its 17 tracks chronicled the US state’s Sixties garage rock and psychedelic scenes. Amongst the bands included were Pat Farrell & The Believers, The Flowerz, The Loose Enz and The Shandells. About the best known were Allentown’s The Kings Ransom, whose moody 1968 single “Shadows of Dawn” was a collector’s staple.

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Love Supreme Festival, Sunday review - eclectic jazz on the Sussex Downs

Katie Colombus

By day three of any festival things are usually winding down. But there was a sense that Love Supreme have saved the best for last this year with a strong offering of funk and soul, R&B and experimental jazz.

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Album: Laura Veirs - Found Light

Kieron Tyler

The last minute of Found Light’s third track “Seaside Haiku” is defined by the repetition of a single phrase: “give but don’t give too much of yourself away.” Before this is the line “I’ve learned a lot from pain.”

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Music Reissues Weekly: Ferkat Al Ard - Oghneya

Kieron Tyler

Oghneya opens with the extraordinary “Matar Al Sabah.” Jazzy, with an overt Brazilian feel it gently swings and swoons. Wordless backing vocals and pulsing but gentle strings add atmosphere. Milton Nascimento comes to mind but the intimate lead voice also feels French, a little bit Julien Clerc. It’s instantly impactful.

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The Bobby Lees, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review - rock’n’roll like it should be

Guy Oddy

In a week when all kinds of people were going bonkers over an octogenarian playing songs from over 50 years ago to tens of thousands of people in a field in Somerset, it’s nice to know that rock’n’roll has not yet rolled over completely to become family friendly entertainment. In fact, if an evening with the Bobby Lees is anything to go by, it’s positively thriving – as long as you know where to look.

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Glastonbury Festival 2022: an unexpurgated odyssey around the best party on the planet

Caspar Gomez

Last days of June 2022, I sit in my writing hut. My liver is radioactive jelly, my nose reinforced concrete, my leg muscles marathon-cramped, and poisoned perspiration rolls down my forehead, stinging my eyeballs.

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The Rolling Stones, BST Hyde Park review - let it rock!

Tim Cumming

A few spots of rain greeted the arrival of the Rolling Stones on BST Hyde Park’s stage on Saturday night, and after “Street Fighting Man”, as Mick Jagger dedicated the show to the much-loved and lamented drummer Charlie Watts, a rainbow appeared over the stage. 

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Music Reissues Weekly: Whatever You Want - Bob Crewe's 60s Soul Sounds

Kieron Tyler

In 1965, Bob Crewe was living alongside Central Park in New York’s Dakota building. At various times, the block’s other residents included Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. For work, Crewe’s 6th-floor offices on West 60th Street were in a complex overlooking Columbia Circle and South Central Park. Atlantic Records was also based there, as was Roulette Records. He was flying high.

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Blk Jks, Moth Club review - Johannesburg’s art-rockers are more straightforward live than on album

Kieron Tyler

Figuratively, “Tselane” is Blk Jks’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Both songs begin quietly and move through passages of turbulence suggesting an impending tempest. Each has a command of dynamics which pulls the listener in, generating anticipation for what comes next. On stage, “Tselane” is introduced as a “lullaby.”

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Album: Hollie Cook - Happy Hour

Kathryn Reilly

In a world seemingly devoid of joy, Hollie Cook's fourth album is a very welcome salve indeed. It’s not just the deliciously mellow groove of the genre and her mellifluous tones, but the feeling of stepping away from the everyday – a holiday from the horrible – which makes this a musta-have for all summer gatherings.

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