New Music Reviews
Album: Teenage Fanclub - Endless ArcadeMonday, 26 April 2021
A few hurdles need jumping before grappling with the essence of Teenage Fanclub’s 11th album. Endless Arcade is their first without bassist and founder member Gerard Love. He, alongside Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, was one of the band’s songwriters. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Spiritualized - Lazer Guided MelodiesSunday, 25 April 2021
Lazer Guided Melodies was great. It still is. Spiritualized’s debut album built from what was already there in Jason Pierce’s previous band Spacemen 3 and took it into newer, more textured territory. While softer-focussed and more dynamic than Spacemen 3 there was still an edge, a brittle carapace which ensured Spiritualized was its own thing. Read more... |
Album: Field Music - Flat White MoonMonday, 19 April 2021
Although it is not solipsistic, Flat White Moon is Field Music’s most personal, most revealing, warmest-sounding album so far. David and Peter Brewis have opened up. Their ninth studio album together opens with a seeming declaration. “Orion from the Street” has a drum pattern, bubbling, whooshing sounds and weaving, treated guitar unambiguously alluding to The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: T2 - It'll All Work Out In BoomlandSunday, 18 April 2021
It'll All Work Out In Boomland was issued by Decca at the end of July 1970. A poor seller at the time, it began attracting attention in the mid-Eighties when prices for original copies began creeping up. Around 2000, it was picking up about £100. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Wes Montgomery - The NDR Hamburg Studio RecordingsSunday, 11 April 2021
Speaking to America’s Hit Parader magazine in August 1967, Frank Zappa said “If you want to learn how to play guitar, listen to Wes Montgomery.” The article was titled My Favorite Records and the head Mother was being featured shortly after the release of Absolutely Free, the second Mothers Of Invention... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Tame Impala - InnerSpeaker (2010➝2020)Sunday, 04 April 2021
Heard now, InnerSpeaker sounds as it did when it was issued in 2010. Tame Impala’s debut album was crisp, fizzing; a pithy collection of psychedelic rock nuggets which made its case instantly. This was modern psychedelia, infused with a dash of Sweden’s Dungen, which still sounds fresh. Despite brushing the borders of freak-out territory, it was direct. Tuneful too. Fantastic. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 63: KMFDM, Laurie Anderson, Seratones, The Telescopes, Black Sabbath, Conrad Schnitzler and moreThursday, 01 April 2021
Rumours keep swirling of pressing plants stumped by the effects of COVID-19 lockdown, and it’s true that vinyl editions of many albums have been delayed, yet still those records keep arriving. At theartsdesk on Vinyl, no-one cares if an album was streaming or out in virtual form months ago. Read more... |
Album: Ryley Walker - Course In FableWednesday, 31 March 2021
Although Course In Fable is, as Ryley Walker albums go, pretty straightforward some sharp left turns indicate that the formerly Chicago-based, now New York-dwelling guitar whizz isn’t content with limiting a single musical line of attack to one song. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Jon Savage's 1972-1976 - All Our Times Have ComeSunday, 28 March 2021
Close to the back of Jon Savage’s 1991 book England’s Dreaming, there’s a section titled “Discography.” In this, he goes through the records which fed into and were spawned by punk rock and the Sex Pistols, the book’s subject. Read more... |
Album: Bheki Mseleku - Beyond The StarsWednesday, 24 March 2021
Praise gets heaped on the already well known. And that often leaves others in the shadows. I’m not saying that Abdullah Ibrahim doesn’t deserve the accolades – notably, “our Mozart” from Nelson Mandela – but there have been other genius level South African pianists: one was Moses Molelekwa who died at just 27. The other is the very great Bheki Mseleku (1955-2008). Read more... |
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