New music
Album: Lorde - VirginThursday, 26 June 2025
Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose production of Melodrama was a linear progression, but then came the acoustic... Read more... |
Album: Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost AlbumsThursday, 26 June 2025
It’s somewhat surprising to read that The Boss wasn’t happy with Born in the USA. After all, it was – remains – his most iconic album, the LP (for that’s what it was originally) that jet-propelled Bruce Springsteen into the mainstream. A... Read more... |
Brad Mehldau Trio, St George's Bristol review - exquisite intelligenceWednesday, 25 June 2025
There's something luminous about the Brad Mehldau Trio. The music they create with such joy shines with a special clarity, in which ever-changing forms constantly reveal lines of shared thought, explicitly, yet purveying an abiding sense of wonder.... Read more... |
Album: Claudia Brücken - Night MirrorThursday, 03 July 2025
German singer Claudia Brücken has had a long and busy career, initially defined by her role in Propaganda. They were a cult 1980s band on ZTT Records who laced their opulent synth pop with an appealingly morbid Teutonic sensibility. Decades later,... Read more... |
Album: Mocky - Music Will Explain (Choir Music Vol. 1)Wednesday, 02 July 2025
Dominic “Mocky” Salole has had a long career in which the tension between authenticity and pastiche has been a constant. Toronto-born, of English and Yemeni heritage, he came of musical age in the Bohemian hotbed of 1990s Berlin with a close-knit... Read more... |
Album: Brìghde Chaimbeul - SunwiseMonday, 30 June 2025
The first five-and-a-half minutes of Sunwise’s opening track “Dùsgadh / Waking" are taken up by a drone. Played on the Scottish small pipes – a form of bagpipes – this is in due course supplemented by a series of individual notes played in clusters... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Rupert’s People - Dream In My MindSunday, 29 June 2025
Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was an instant phenomenon. Recorded in April 1967 and issued as a single on 12 May after pre-release play on pirate station Radio London, it topped the UK charts four weeks later. Globally, it hit big on most... Read more... |
Album: JF Robitaille & Lail Arad - Wild MovesSaturday, 28 June 2025
Around eight years ago, London singer-songwriter Lail Arad started releasing one-off tracks with Canadian singer JF Robitaille, once of Montreal indie outfit The Social Register (Arad’s own 2016 album The Onion is an undiscovered diamond that should... Read more... |
Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - help!Wednesday, 25 June 2025
Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the musician and music historian Bob Stanley pointed out, in his 2007 review of Jonathan Gould’s Can’t Buy Me... Read more... |
Album: BC Camplight - A Sober ConversationWednesday, 25 June 2025
A Sober Conversation is the work of a master songwriter, one who knows how to achieve their goals. As the album’s nine tracks pour from the speakers, comparisons come to mind: 20/20 and Smiley Smile-era Beach Boys, Lindsey Buckingham, the early solo... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 91: Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, Tropical Fuck Storm, Sparks, The Sisters of Mercy and moreTuesday, 24 June 2025
VINYL OF THE MONTHFrank From Blue Velvet I Am Frank (Property of the Lost) + Column258 Interloper (The Workshop Sessions, Volume One) (Property of the Lost)Hastings label Property of the Lost has grown into a potent force, its stable of artists... Read more... |
Album: Durand and the Indications - FlowersMonday, 23 June 2025
Neo-soul devotees Durand Jones and the Indications mine a vein of sensuous sounds, at the soft end of a genre that's partly defined by the raw passion of gospel. Their roots draw from vintage Curtis Mayfield and the smooth vocal harmonies of the... Read more... |
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