New music
CD: Django Bates' Belovèd - ConfirmationTuesday, 11 September 2012
Django Bates has commented that he probably first heard the music of Charlie Parker while still in the womb. Parker's music has thus been part of his musical make up ab ovo, as it were. This brilliant follow-up to Bates' 2010 Parker tribute Belovèd... Read more... |
Lady Gaga, Twickenham StadiumSunday, 09 September 2012
After Lady Gaga's concert at Twickenham last night, I asked some of the Little Monsters scurrying back to the station the name of the last song she had sung. The song she sang right after declaring that she had to bring the evening to an early end.... Read more... |
CD: Bob Dylan - TempestSunday, 09 September 2012
Like Orpheus, Bob Dylan is familiar with the underworld. As he gets closer to meeting his maker, the tone of his work has become less baroque, increasingly stripped down and almost naïve in its simplicity. His latest album marks another episode,... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Lee "Scratch" Perry, Cud, Taj Mahal, David CassidySunday, 09 September 2012
Lee “Scratch” Perry and Friends: Disco Devil - The Jamaican DiscomixesThomas H GreenAs bass culture conquers the musical universe, with even Justin Bieber diving into dubstep waters and gnarly electro-goth Skrillex one of the biggest earning new... Read more... |
Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard, The Haunt, BrightonFriday, 07 September 2012
Astonishment is the emotion that creeps up most often when watching 36-year-old New York singer-songwriter Jeffrey Lewis. The term singer-songwriter does him an injustice, in fact, for these days it summons notions of strummed predictability,... Read more... |
Lady Gaga: Back to the FutureFriday, 07 September 2012
Lady Gaga arrives in the UK this weekend to play two huge shows at Twickenham Stadium, before moving on to Manchester. Today, she is the biggest pop star in the world. Three years ago she was in the final stages of a highly orchestrated campaign... Read more... |
CD: Pet Shop Boys - ElysiumFriday, 07 September 2012
Pet Shop Boys eleventh album leaps sideways into smooth, opulent US FM radio production in a way that will initially give long term fans palpitations. The duo sound… different. They recorded Elysium in Los Angeles with Grammy-winning Kanye West... Read more... |
CD: The xx – CoexistThursday, 06 September 2012
One of the current tropes in stand-up comedy is the way that television appropriates music to manipulate emotions. Sean Hughes employs a flurry of Snow Patrol when he acts out buying some bread, while newcomer David Trent has Sigur Rós on his... Read more... |
CD: David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love This GiantWednesday, 05 September 2012
There's a lot that's right with this album. Love This Giant sounds like Talking Heads for one, suggesting that David Byrne has made his peace with what made him great in the first place, and has seemingly stopped his slide into becoming a... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the End of the Road FestivalTuesday, 04 September 2012
“There’re a lot of turds out there, ladies and gentlemen. But they’re not one of them.” It’s Friday afternoon in Larmer Tree Gardens, a wood-rimmed, laurel-trimmed, urn-decorated corner of Dorset, and thank yous are coming thick and fast for Bella... Read more... |
The Arts Desk Radio Show 7Monday, 03 September 2012
The seventh radio show from theartsdesk features a wealth of eclectic music, from grime to Bach, while Joe Muggs and Peter Culshaw discuss everything from French café culture of the Fifties to sub-Saharan politics in the Sudan and northern Mali.... Read more... |
10 Questions for Ian HunterMonday, 03 September 2012
Ian Hunter’s new album, When I’m President, is an almost obscenely vibrant piece of work for a man who – despite that impossibly golden mop of hair – is now 73 years old. But then Hunter has always been a rock'n'roll survivor. Born in Shropshire in... Read more... |
