thu 17/07/2025

New Music Reviews

The Divine Comedy: Live from the Barbican review – thirty years of great songs

Bernard Hughes

If “things” hadn’t intervened, September would have seen the Divine Comedy play a five night residency at the Barbican, playing their entire back catalogue, two albums a night, to mark 30 years since the band was started.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Crass - The Crassical Collection

Kieron Tyler

The cultural imprint Crass were leaving was apparent while they were active. As well as their own music, their label Crass Records released records by Flux Of Pink Indians, the pre-Sugarcubes outfit Kukl and The Damned’s Captain Sensible – Crass were instrumental in him becoming a vegetarian.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Peephole In My Brain - British Progressive Pop Sounds Of 1971

Kieron Tyler

The title comes from the lyrics of “Andy Warhol”: track two, side two of David Bowie’s late 1971 album Hunky Dory: ”Put a peephole in my brain, Two new pence to have a go, I'd like to be a gallery, Put you all inside my show.” The new pence reference recognised Britain’s recent adoption of decimalised currency.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Helen Shapiro - Face The Music The Complete Singles 1967-1984

Kieron Tyler

What happens when the hits dry up? And what happens a little further down the line, as the years of being on the charts recede into the past? For Helen Shapiro, the questions are answered by the intriguing Face The Music: The Complete Singles 1967–1984, a 25-track compilation collecting all her pop singles from the period covered by the title. Her work in jazz is not heard.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: John Coltrane - Giant Steps

Kieron Tyler

Giant Steps doesn’t suffer from a lack of availability. A couple of weeks ago, two editions of John Coltrane’s 1960 landmark set were available in a central London music store.

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GogolFest:Dream review - the best music festival of the summer?

Peter Culshaw

GogolFest:Dream in Kherson, somewhere near the Crimea in Ukraine was the music festival of the summer.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The London Pub Rock Scene, The Year The UK Turned Day-Glo

Kieron Tyler

The standard recitation goes like this. In the early Seventies a London scene evolved, centring on bands playing in pubs. Music was taken back to the grassroots. Finesse was unnecessary. What happened was dubbed pub rock and it laid the ground for an even more basic style: punk rock.

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BBC Proms live online: Anoushka Shankar/Laura Marling - scintillating sitar and fortified folk

Miranda Heggie

In what would have been the year her father, the legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar turned 100, sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar pays tribute to him and builds on his legacy in this online Prom.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Stooges - Live At Goose Lake

Kieron Tyler

So far this year, Live at Goose Lake August 8th, 1970 is 2020’s most exciting archive release. The album is a previously unknown soundboard recording of The Stooges playing at Jackson, Michigan’s Goose Lake Festival. The event was formally billed as Goose Lake Park – International Music Festival.

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South West Four Live, Electric Brixton online review - the dance goes on?

Nick Hasted

If two dozen DJs spin tunes and no one’s there, did a rave really happen? There is plenty of time for such questions during the 25 hours of livestreams substituting for SW4’s annual bank holiday party on Clapham Common.

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