New music
Kieron Tyler
“A rich and occasionally irritatingly gimmicky album…less perfectly realised than Autobahn, though there are some quite pretty tunes. People often charge electronic music with being ‘mechanical,’ confusing machines like clocks and other wind-up toys with devices which operate in ways more analogous to the human brain, which create quite different musical problems from, say, musical-boxes. What is wrong with Kraftwerk, however, is that their music is in fact mechanical, creating a contradiction between form and content which eventually destroys its artistic credibility and any hint of a soul Read more ...
Liz Thomson
The Puppini Sisters brought their signature blend of close harmony singing to Islington’s Union Chapel on Friday, the opening night of a three-week UK tour marking their 20th birthday and the release of their seventh studio album, titled – naturally enough – The Birthday Party. There was nothing Pinteresque about the evening, just unalloyed joy onstage and off. “The Andrews Sisters on acid”, “The Spice Girls of jazz” and “Swing Punks” – this effervescent trio, whose fans include King Charles and Michael Bublé, are all those and more. With their retro-glamour aesthetic (reflected by a few Read more ...
Tom Carr
For Basement, the post-hardcore rockers hailing from Ipswich, their story is one of promise and unpredictability. With their debut, 2011’s I Wish I Could Stay Here, they took the scene by storm, only to disband after their second album the following year. They had left their mark so deeply though, in a sense it didn’t feel like they went away. And after their mid-2010's return, their sound shifted subtly across their next two albums, settling on a blend of their original style with a straight-up alternative rock foundation. What had really stood them out was an ability to cut Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Rick Rubin has revivified many late-career musicians, most notably Johnny Cash, whose quartet of American Recordings achieved both universal praise and commercial success. Twenty years ago, he worked with Neil Diamond, applying his trademark unplugged approach to Diamond’s distinctive spregesang style. The result, 12 Songs (2005), was one of the singer's most successful studio recordings, charting at #4 on Billboard. James Bassett of PopMatters considered it “an album of rare beauty, grace, and eloquence that captures Diamond in all his plain-spoken and big-hearted glory.” Home Before Read more ...
Ibi Keita
In 1999, American Football pioneered a brand-new genre with their self-titled album, and while they didn’t gain much recognition from their odd style of music, it soon grew into something beautiful, widely loved and imitated. Midwest-Emo is a genre that relies on the foundations that American Football set on that record, a slurry of twinkly melodies and precise, often off beat rhythms, I personally think it’s beautiful mess, but unsurprisingly, it’s an acquired taste. Vocals are the third piece to the Midwest-Emo puzzle, always conversational, strained and unbothered, almost shouted from Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
London band David Cronenberg’s Wife, a grimy stew of Eighties indie and folk trimmings, deal in the abject; shame, sadness and lust gone rotten. Their new album, for instance, contains a song called “Mermaid’s Tale” wherein the first-person narrator, a morose divorcee, comes across a gorgeous mermaid while sailing near the Greek island of Hydra. She needs him for sex, but things soon turn grubby, forlorn and prosaic. Also funny, in a twisted way.There’s a storied tradition of abjection in the arts, from Iain Banks’ Wasp Factory to Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” to the paintings of Francis Bacon Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Cast your mind back to the release of “Never Be The Same Again” (1999), which seemed to come out of nowhere and turned Sporty Spice’s image on its head. For the least pushy of the fabulous five, it was something of a turn up for the books. And now, at the ripe old age of 52 (whipper-snapper), she’s pulled off what could be considered another volte face.Ask me to name the female artist with the most songs at number 1 in the UK chart’s history and I wouldn’t have plumped for Ms Melanie. But that’s what the blurb claims, alongside this mega fact: “she is he only female performer to top the Read more ...
Tim Cumming
I first saw country singer songwriter Kacey Musgraves perform at the Arts Club on Dover Street back in 2013 for the launch of her first major-label album, Same Trailer Different Park, which won her the first of her eight Grammies, and she was a great performer and an even more striking songwriter – witty, concise, memorable, with great turns of phrase and a great clarity in her storytelling and characters. She was/is a superior version of the uber-megastar that is/was Taylor Swift.She’s funnier and filthier than Taylor; I can’t see gazillions of preteens bawling out her lyrics without Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It is almost without fail that Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival is guaranteed to be one of my annual musical highlights – and despite it still only being April, I suspect that it will be the same again this year. As is usually the case, the line-up of this celebration of the weird and distinctly wonderful was one where only the most musically literate would be aware of more than a handful of the performers. However, it was again a set-up where most would have gone home having discovered a new favourite band. This time, mine would most certainly be the raw and visceral Prostitute. That said, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ostensibly, Jesca Hoop’s music is categorised as folk. How to square this with “Big Storm,” the fourth track from the singer-songwriter’s seventh album, Long Wave Home? The percussion sounds like – but, it turns out, actually isn’t – a drum machine. Hoop’s voice is close-miked, intimate. The choruses are gospel-esque. Brass instruments stab. Overall, there’s a country music lilt. Just before it abruptly stops, Hoop says “OK.” Odd, and folk-adjacent rather than folk, but it coheres – and makes sense.After this, “Love is Salvation.” Here, notwithstanding the jazzy arrangement, a kinship with Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It must be exhausting to be a member of Belfast hip-hop crew, Kneecap. Having already recorded a debut album and fistful of fine singles like “H.O.O.D.” and “Get Your Brits Out” in the late 2010s, during the last couple of years they’ve participated in a semi-autobiographical film and its soundtrack, put out the splendid Fine Art, toured relentlessly and then had to endure the circus of being named pop’s latest bogymen because of their support for the Palestinian people.Not ones to retreat into moneyed exile, however, their new album tries to make sense of the situation with a barrel load of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last year, Paul Weller compiled a collection of his favourite soul tracks. A highlight of That Sweet Sweet Music was Jon Lucien’s affecting “Search for the Inner Self.” Originally issued on 45 in September 1971, it’s a long-time favourite of deep-digging soul enthusiasts. As is Lucien’s dance floor-filler “We got Love.” However, the latter cut was not issued when it was recorded – or even soon after.“We got Love” was first propagated by the DJ Snowboy. He’d played percussion for Lucien at a London show in 1995. Lucien gave him a home-made CD including tracks which had never been issued. Read more ...