New music
CD: Boris – DearWednesday, 12 July 2017
Boris are a trio of Japanese noise rockers who are masters of all things heavy, and Dear, a double album of superior quality, marks the band’s 25th anniversary as a going concern. Covering a range of bases from doomy slabs of heavy noise to riff-... Read more... |
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Hyde Park review - electrifying American classicsTuesday, 11 July 2017
Tough security checks mean I make it to British Summer Time’s main stage just moments before the opening chords of the early evening set from The Lumineers.The Denver-based band’s rousing folk rock beats burn beneath blue skies; a kick drum and... Read more... |
CD: Pete Fij/Terry Bickers - We Are MillionairesMonday, 10 July 2017
To anyone other than Eighties and Nineties indie obsessives, the guitarist from The House of Love and Levitation and the singer from Adorable getting together in 2014 did not cause a stir. However, both had stylistically leapt away from their pasts... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Silhouettes & Statues - A Gothic RevolutionSunday, 09 July 2017
In February 1983, New Musical Express ran a cover feature categorising what it termed “positive punk”. Bands co-opted into this ostensibly new trend were Blood & Roses, Brigandage, Danse Society, Rubella Ballet, Sex Gang Children, Southern Death... Read more... |
CD: Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah - DiasporaSunday, 09 July 2017
New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah has been at the forefront of the movement to reinvent jazz for some time. On this album he claims to be creating a new kind of “Stretch Music” (and has created an app of the same name, which won... Read more... |
CD: Melvins - A Walk With Love and DeathSaturday, 08 July 2017
For over 30 years, Melvins have been flagbearers for a kind of foundational American underground rock. Monstrously psychedelic, heavy as lead, mischievous and angry, they are part of a lineage that connects to squarepeg counterculture forefathers... Read more... |
BambinO / Last And First Men, Manchester International FestivalFriday, 07 July 2017
The Manchester International Festival – a biennale of new creative work – this year has a new artistic director in John McGrath, and there’s no large-scale new opera or prominent "classical" work, it would seem, other than Raymond Yiu’s song cycle,... Read more... |
Steve Winwood, Eventim Apollo review - multi-talented performer redesigns his back catalogueThursday, 06 July 2017
The precocious Steve Winwood joined the Spencer Davis Group when he was 14, when the Sixties themselves were still young, and hasn’t really stopped ever since. True, it has been nearly a decade since his last album of new material, Nine Lives, but... Read more... |
CD: Haim - Something to Tell YouThursday, 06 July 2017
Back in 2013, Haim's debut seemed like the freshest breath of air in a slightly stuffy rock scene. The girls' inimitable musical style – a kind of blend of Stevie Nicks and Shania Twain – lit up any number of radio playlists. Equally... Read more... |
CD: Lucy Rose - Something's ChangingWednesday, 05 July 2017
Lucy Rose is not mainstream. She doesn't rely on commercial record deals to the point that she essentially crowd-sourced her recent tour of Latin America, playing for fans for free as long as they hosted her. It was an experience that spawned this... Read more... |
CD: Autarkic – I Love You, Go AwayMonday, 03 July 2017
Tel Aviv producer Nadav Spiegel hadn't set out to make a full-length follow-up to last year's Can You Pass the Knife? mini-LP, but once he had a backbone of songs, events sort of got away from him. I Love You, Go Away is the result and its nine... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Beach HouseSunday, 02 July 2017
From beginning to end, B-Sides and Rarities plays through like a regular album; as though it collects a series of tracks recorded where a cohesive release with a flow was the goal. Yet this 14-cut collection is a compilation with its earliest... Read more... |
