sun 06/07/2025

New Music Reviews

Bluedot Festival 2022 review - science and space travel meet musical frolicking at Jodrell Bank

Katie Colombus

 

FRIDAY 22 JULY by Caspar Gomez

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Music Reissues Weekly: The Beatles - Get Back

Kieron Tyler

“At all times, the film-makers have attempted to present an accurate portrait of the events depicted and the people involved.” The on-screen statement beginning each of Get Back's three parts acknowledges that definitions of accuracy can depend on points of view.

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Frida Kahlo Through Indian Classical Music, Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall review - a strangely effective meeting of cultures

Peter Culshaw

This one sounded implausible. Frida Kahlo, the great (and fashionable – collected by the likes of Madonna) Mexican painter interpreted by Indian classical music at the Elgar Room in the Royal Albert Hall. It was, however, entrancing, made a curious sense, and was a different way of immersing yourself both in the music and paintings.

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Haim, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - charismatic siblings personable as ever

Jonathan Geddes

Sweetness never lasts too long at a Haim gig. No sooner had Alana Haim, the youngest of the Californian siblings, finished a speech about her delight about being back in Glasgow by announcing she was going to “smell the f****** roses” then bass-playing elder sister Este piped up with “I’m smelling my armpits. They are ripe.” It summed up a chat-heavy show that at times felt like part gig, part stand-up comedy try-out.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Happy In Hollywood - The Productions Of Gary Usher

Kieron Tyler

As either a producer or songwriter Gary Usher worked with The Beach Boys and The Byrds, the two most consequential California bands of the Sixties.

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Supersonic Festival 2022, Birmingham review - a hot and heavy weekend in Digbeth

Guy Oddy

Last weekend saw the long-awaited, post-Covid return of Birmingham’s urban festival of sonic strangeness, and yet again it was a time to wallow in the sounds of previously unknown or vaguely heard about artists, while trying not to melt as temperatures sent mercury levels into orbit.

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theartsdesk in Montreal - delights and discoveries at the 42nd International Jazz Festival

Sebastian Scotney

For most Montrealers, their 10-day jazz festival (30 June - 9 July) is, as the new head of programming Maurin Auxéméry described it to me, a “free, all-you-can-eat musical buffet every night”.

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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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