New music
CD: The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Merrie LandWednesday, 07 November 2018
Pram are an experimental pop band from Moseley in Birmingham, who specialise in creating quirky soundscapes, eerie songs and whoozy instrumentals using all manner of strange instruments. They are also unlikely to ever achieve a mass following. The... Read more... |
The Prodigy, Brighton Centre review - a proper bangin' night outTuesday, 06 November 2018
“That’s what we fucking do!” So says Maxim at the concert’s very end, surveying the sweating, raving carnage of 4,500 souls before him. One of The Prodigy’s two frontman, he stands still finally, after spending the rest of the gig pacing and rushing... Read more... |
Album: Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - The Capitol Studios SessionsMonday, 05 November 2018
Wow, this is truly infectious! Feel-good music played so well and by a guy whose day job is as an actor. And not a bit-part player – this is the man who gave us David Levinson in Independence Day and Dr Iain Malcolm in Jurassic Park and who made his... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: John & Beverley Martyn, Mott The HoopleSunday, 04 November 2018
Although John & Beverley Martyn and Mott The Hoople were both signed to Island, the connection went further than being with the same label. When Guy Stevens conceived the band he named Mott The Hoople, the producer saw them as uniting the... Read more... |
CD: Marianne Faithfull - Negative CapabilitySaturday, 03 November 2018
There are many layers of allusion that come with Marianne Faithfull’s powerful new album. The title is drawn from Keats, his formula for great poetry as opposed to instructive morality, and it’s towards a poetry of experience rather than the fixed... Read more... |
Caro Emerald, Royal Albert Hall – an injection of sunshine for the weary soulFriday, 02 November 2018
“We will be taking you on a journey,” promises Caro Emerald at the start of tonight’s return to the Royal Albert Hall, which she last played back in April 2017 – and for the next 90 minutes, that’s what jazz-pop queen Emerald and her slick seven-... Read more... |
Slow Moving Clouds, Purcell Room review - a new take on folkFriday, 02 November 2018
The young Dublin folk trio fuse vocal harmonies with superb acoustic musicianship, primarily on cello, fiddle and Nyckelharpa. They bring together Irish and Nordic – specifically Finnish – folk traditions, building them to dizzying heights on a... Read more... |
CD: Barbra Streisand - WallsThursday, 01 November 2018
If there's anyone on this godforsaken planet who is fully entitled to emote their way through a mash-up of “Imagine” and “What a Wonderful World”, it's Barbra Streisand, right? This, after all, is the woman who was able to deliver “Life on Mars” as... Read more... |
More Blood, More Tracks review - Bob Dylan opens upWednesday, 31 October 2018
You get plenty of Dylan for your buck these days, with the Mondo Scripto exhibition currently at the Halcyon Gallery in London, and a totemic and arrestingly beautiful set of Jerry Schatzberg's photographs of mid-Sixties Dylan in all his fuzzy glory... Read more... |
CD: The Prodigy - No TouristsWednesday, 31 October 2018
One of the major abiding musical memories of the late 1990s for many wasn’t so much five Mancunians ripping off Beatles’ songs, but Keith Flint of The Prodigy, growling “I’m a Firestarter/Twisted Firestarter” while all kinds of electronic battery... Read more... |
Best Albums of 2018Wednesday, 31 October 2018
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why. Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small... Read more... |
Corrosion Of Conformity & Orange Goblin, O2 Institute, Birmingham review – international gang of veteran rockers get drunk and get wildMonday, 29 October 2018
Winter came to Birmingham this weekend but fortunately, so did a modern-day, multi-national Viking band of rockers, consisting of Corrosion Of Conformity and Orange Goblin, ably assisted by Fireball Ministry and Black Moth. With no intention of... Read more... |
