New music
CD: Tove Lo - Sunshine KittyMonday, 16 September 2019
Swedish singer Tove Lo appeared at a time when female physical sexuality was being used as a raw, blunt weapon in pop, when porno chic reached an apex in music videos. Half a decade ago was the time of Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” and Miley Cyrus’s “... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: CaravanSunday, 15 September 2019
Last week in central London, the Covent Garden branch of the book and music chain Fopp was selling CD sets branded as “5 Classic Albums” and “Original Album Series”. Each collected five CDs of the same number of albums. Amongst what could be picked... Read more... |
Gazelle Twin, Mirth, Marvel and Maud review - sardonic folkSaturday, 14 September 2019
Elizabeth Bernholz, known on stage as Gazelle Twin, comes straight from a line of musical visionaries – rebels and misfits whose influences fleet through her songs like will-o’-the-wisps. Here is the formal, clever ennui of The Stranglers, the... Read more... |
CD: Mudhoney - Morning in AmericaSaturday, 14 September 2019
Mudhoney’s new album Morning in America is a strange beast. Made up of outtakes from last year’s Digital Garbage, a cover version and rerecorded versions of limited edition 7” singles, one look at the track listing suggests a second CD that might... Read more... |
Edwyn Collins, Concorde 2, Brighton review - enjoyable evening of tight guitar popFriday, 13 September 2019
In March of this year Edwyn Collins released his ninth studio album, Badbea, his fourth since two life-altering cerebral haemorrhages derailed him in 2005. It’s a vivacious collection that runs the gamut of what guitar pop can be, from acoustic... Read more... |
CD: Charli XCX - CharliFriday, 13 September 2019
Charli XCX would make a cracking mixtape. I mean that not in the hip hop culture sense - although she’s knocked out a few of those in the five years since the release of Sucker, her last album proper - but like the mixtapes you used to make for your... Read more... |
CD: Jenny Hval - The Practice of LoveThursday, 12 September 2019
On a first pass, The Practice of Love seems to be an electropop album in thrall to trance music’s tropes: the synth wash, repeated musical phrases, a whooshy programmed percussive pulse, an otherworldly atmosphere. But the lyrics invite further... Read more... |
CD: Metronomy - Metronomy ForeverWednesday, 11 September 2019
According to Metronomy maestro Joseph Mount, his first attempt of album number six was a much snappier affair. But it wasn’t until he broke from his self-imposed immediacy that it started connecting with him. In its final form, Metronomy Forever... Read more... |
The Flaming Lips, Brixton Academy review - an explosion of joyTuesday, 10 September 2019
“Thanks for being in here with us tonight,” Wayne Coyne begins, “when you could be outside with the universe shining down on us.” Having clearly experienced a pre-gig epiphany from the unexceptional South London sky, The Flaming Lips singer seems... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Amazing GraceTuesday, 10 September 2019
Over two days in 1972, the great Aretha Franklin, undoubtedly one of the greatest American voices of the 20th century, performed and recorded gospel classics in Los Angeles, with a predominantly African-American audience, the red-hot Los Angeles... Read more... |
Prom 66: In the Name of the Earth review - John Luther Adams's ambitious choral spectacularMonday, 09 September 2019
This is the kind of thing that the Proms does well – indeed, where else would it get an outing? A "big event" piece of massive scale in terms of size and duration, in many ways a modern Spem in Alium, but where Tallis’s 1570 piece demands 40 singers... Read more... |
CD: Pixies - Beneath the EyrieMonday, 09 September 2019
With a line-up that has been stable for a few years, Black Francis seems to have decided that it’s now time for Pixies to embrace their role as Rock’s Elder Statesmen by taking the best bits of their sound and adding something of a more mature sheen... Read more... |
