New music
CD: Manic Street Preachers - Resistance is FutileThursday, 12 April 2018
Over the years the Manics have travelled a varied and adventurous musical path with styles ranging from punk to disco-rock. One thing has remained constant: their intense sense of righteousness. Until now. Resistance is Futile finds... Read more... |
CD: National Jazz Trio of Scotland - Standards Vol.IVWednesday, 11 April 2018
The National Jazz Trio of Scotland are not really that at all. With a name designed to sound like a stiffly formal unit they are, in fact, an entity based around Bill Wells, a Scottish institution, albeit an alternative one. He’s been around the... Read more... |
Joan As Police Woman: 'I was going to die if I didn't have some way to express myself' - interviewTuesday, 10 April 2018
Joan Wasser – aka Joan as Police Woman – is known as a sophisticated songwriter and a pretty groovy person. But most of all it’s her gorgeously warm voice that's earned her a cult following. Over seven albums her angst-ridden vocals have explored... Read more... |
CD: Laura Veirs - The LookoutMonday, 09 April 2018
Two minutes into The Lookout, a couple of related parallels bubble up when the David Crosby of If I Could Only Remember my Name and Gene Clark at his most sparse spring to mind. It’s not that the album’s opening cut “Margaret Sands” sounds like... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Radka Toneff and Steve DobrogoszSunday, 08 April 2018
Fairytales is lovely. It opens with a subtle version of Jimmy Webb’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” which merges Radka Toneff’s emotive and intimate vocal with Steve Dobrogosz’s sparse piano lines. The ingredients are minimal, there is no... Read more... |
CD: Brazilian Girls - Let's Make LoveFriday, 06 April 2018
This New York band’s first album for a decade is as good as anything else they’ve done, but what were they thinking with the track order? Things get off to an agreeable bouncy Blondie-esque start with first single “Pirates”. But after that there are... Read more... |
CD: Kylie Minogue - GoldenThursday, 05 April 2018
Oh this is annoying. One really doesn't want to be mean about the People's Princess. Kylie is one of the great pop stars of our time: charming, witty, a survivor, with several dozen proper classic songs under her belt, she has never stopped sparking... Read more... |
CD: The Damned - Evil SpiritsWednesday, 04 April 2018
The Damned may very well be the last men standing from the first wave of UK punk – albeit with only Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible still there from the original line-up – but with their new disc they haven’t even thought of resting on their... Read more... |
Gregory Porter, Royal Albert Hall review - impressive first night for the Nat King Cole & Me tourTuesday, 03 April 2018
It was 2011 when Gregory Porter made his first London appearances at Pizza Express in Dean Street. That club has a capacity just over 100, and yet it only seems like yesterday. Last night that same honeyed voice was filling the cavernous 5,272-... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 38: Led Zeppelin, Lissie, Holger Czukay, Gomez, Ringo Starr, Moscoman and moreTuesday, 03 April 2018
Can you find a more extensive and comprehensive rundown of monthly vinyl releases than theartsdesk on Vinyl? We can’t. But then we would say that. Don’t believe us, though; below we surf punk, techno, film soundtracks, folk, major label boxset... Read more... |
CD: Fenne Lily - On HoldTuesday, 03 April 2018
Fenne Lily is a young Bristolian singer-songwriter whose voice will take her far. Her debut album is decent enough, and there are songs on it that reach out and grab you by the guts, but it’s her extraordinary, fragile voice that stays in the mind.... Read more... |
CD: Sonido Gallo Negro - Mambo CósmicoMonday, 02 April 2018
How many albums today feature a sorceress on the harp, an instrument more often played by winged angels? "La Bruja de Texcoco", a practising witch and healer, is one of several Mexican musicians who join Sonido Gallo Negro in their latest and very... Read more... |
