New music
Album: Big Big Train - Welcome to the PlanetWednesday, 26 January 2022
Six months after the release of Common Ground, neo-proggers Big Big Train return with another album of meticulously crafted songs urging human connection, closing communication gaps, and celebrating what it is to be alive; the opener and closer of... Read more... |
Album: Fiona Monbet – MaelströmMonday, 24 January 2022
Fiona Monbet is a phenomenal violinist with a huge expressive range. Her credentials, above all in jazz, are impeccable: the late Didier Lockwood once declared the Franco-Irish musician to be his “spiritual daughter”, but her influences range... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Stan Tracey Trio - The 1959 SessionsSunday, 23 January 2022
What’s now been titled The 1959 Sessions represents an unreleased studio album completed by the Stan Tracey Trio on 5 and 8 June 1959 at Decca’s London studio at Broadhurst Gardens. If issued then, it would have been the swift follow-up to the trio’... Read more... |
Long Promised Road review - another attempt to probe the fragile genius of Brian WilsonSaturday, 22 January 2022
There has been no shortage of documentaries about king Beach Boy Brian Wilson, not to mention the 2014 bio-drama Love & Mercy, so the purpose of this new effort by director Brent Wilson (no relation) isn’t altogether clear. Certainly Wilson (the... Read more... |
Album: Eels - Extreme WitchcraftSaturday, 22 January 2022
Mr. E’s music examines hellish depths, but always climbs back towards the light. Electro-Shock Blues (1998) was soon redeemed by “Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues”, and a trilogy of sometimes feral, wracked albums ended with Tomorrow Morning (2010). As the... Read more... |
Album: Earl Sweatshirt - Sick!Friday, 21 January 2022
Around 2017, Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, known professionally as Earl Sweatshirt, said he wanted to push his music in a more experimental direction, to do “riskier shit” to be precise. This need to venture out after being released contractually from... Read more... |
Album: John Mellencamp - Strictly A One-Eyed JackThursday, 20 January 2022
“I didn’t even know what I was writing about. It was just sent to me”, John Mellencamp has said of Strictly A One-Eyed Jack, his first album in five years.Lauded by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Nora Guthrie, who sees in his work echoes of her father... Read more... |
Album: Lady London - Lady Like: The Boss TapeWednesday, 19 January 2022
Virtual “mixtapes” are not proper albums. Their purpose is often to whet the appetite. Nowhere is this more so than in US hip hop and right now Lady London’s new teaser is much-vaunted.Off the back of a couple of hot tunes that woke her peers to her... Read more... |
Album: Boris - WMonday, 17 January 2022
This is just boggling. The Japanese rock trio Boris have been together in the same lineup for over a quarter of a century – and it’s longer still since their original formation – but they’re outdoing themselves record by record. Their last record,... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds - Stormy Monday And The Eagles Fly On FridaySunday, 16 January 2022
TV-watching pop fans in many of the British regions were served a treat on 16 September 1966. A whole episode of Ready Steady Go! was dedicated to Otis Redding, who had arrived in the UK a week earlier on his 25th birthday.As would be expected... Read more... |
Album: Elvis Costello and the Imposters - The Boy Named IfSaturday, 15 January 2022
There is a sense in which Elvis Costello emerged as a recording artist fully grown, with that unique vocal mix of vulnerability and insolence, savvy and often brilliant lyrics. Although he has never stopped experimenting, always with the logic of a... Read more... |
Album: Spell Songs II – Let the Light InThursday, 13 January 2022
The first set of Spell Songs, The Lost Words, was inspired by nature writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris’s spell-spinning mission to bring back those ‘lost words’ from the natural world that had been excised from children’s... Read more... |
