New music
theartsdesk on Vinyl 44: Thom Yorke, Primal Scream, Elvis, Noisferatu, R.E.M., Bauhaus, Mo'Wax and moreTuesday, 13 November 2018![]() Enough hyping! This month, without further ado, let’s head straight to the reviews…VINYL OF THE MONTHLOR Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (Lo Records)With Public Service Broadcasting’s The Race for Space making a noise only three years ago (and First Man... Read more... |
CD: Imogen Heap - The Music of Harry Potter and the Cursed ChildTuesday, 13 November 2018![]() London’s Palace Theatre this week celebrated the thousandth performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened there back in 2016. Like everything else JK Rowing puts her hand to, it’s been an outrageous success, taking the post-Hogwarts... Read more... |
CD: Liela Moss - My Name is Safe in Your MouthMonday, 12 November 2018![]() My Name is Safe in Your Mouth takes off with “Above You, Around You”, its fourth track. Up to that point, progress has been stately. Minimal piano refrains, distantly chiming guitars, heartbeat percussion, string swells and a plaintive, multi-... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Jazz on a Summer's DaySunday, 11 November 2018![]() When Jazz on a Summer's Day was first seen in American cinemas in March 1960, it showed that seeing popular music live could be a leisure activity akin to watching high-end sports. Indeed, director Bert Stern intercut the musical performances he... Read more... |
CD: Sarah Gillespie - WishbonesSunday, 11 November 2018![]() Whatever happened to real singer-songwriters? That is to say the kind of artist that raged against society’s ills in one song, and sung tenderly or bitterly of lost love in the next. Today’s insipid equivalent tends to be stuck in a perpetual... Read more... |
CD: J Mascis - Elastic DaysSaturday, 10 November 2018![]() “I don't peak early / I don't peak at all,” goes the wryly self-aware line in the opening song here, “Take me to the Movies”. Thirty-five years since he started releasing records, Mascis isn't interested in peaking, progress or much else beyond... Read more... |
CD: Olly Murs - You Know I KnowThursday, 08 November 2018![]() Olly Murs has done alright for himself. After finishing second in 2009’s X Factor, he’s managed to forge a successful pop career and made a genuinely decent fist of TV presenting (most recently as a mentor on The Voice). ... Read more... |
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... |
