tue 12/08/2025

New music

Reissue CDs Weekly: The City

 The City: Now That Everything’s Been SaidWith early 1971's Tapestry, Carole King released a worldwide best seller which belatedly recognised that as an interpreter of her own songs, she had no peers. King had made the jump from the writer of...

Read more...

CD: John Grant – Grey Tickles, Black Pressure

John Grant is nothing if not a confessional songwriter. On his last album, Pale Green Ghosts, there were moments of dark despair, caustic barbs and some surprisingly slinky grooves soundtracking a man who was offering himself up with a breathtaking...

Read more...

CD: Hurts - Surrender

Hurts first appeared half a decade ago, a duo from Manchester who aspired to Depeche Mode but sounded vaguely like OneRepublic and similar. Which is to say they dealt in stadium sized, studio-orchestrated melodrama that veered towards the...

Read more...

The Lemonheads, Institute, Birmingham

It has been three years since The Lemonheads, Evan Dando’s slacker kings, last toured the UK and six years since they released Varshons, a covers album. So it was a pleasant surprise when they recently announced a return to these shores to play...

Read more...

CD: Tom Jones - Long Lost Suitcase

Sir Tom Jones’ recording career has enjoyed an Indian summer for the first two releases of this trilogy, 2010’s Praise & Blame and 2012’s Spirit In The Room. This concluding album, another collaboration with producer Ethan Johns, returns to a...

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Mercury Rev

The Light in You, Mercury Rev’s eighth studio album, is issued at the end of this week. It is their first for seven years, following 2008’s Snowflake Midnight. In the run up to its release, main-men and constants Jonathan Donahue and Grasshopper (...

Read more...

CD: W.A.S.P. - Golgotha

It’s sometimes suggested that few things in music are as ridiculous as Christian metal. The point, however, is moot. The band Stryper, for instance, play with such inspired fury any sermonising seems entirely organic. Then there are the likes of...

Read more...

CD: Dungen - Allas Sak

From its title-track opening cut to the final moments of its closer “Sova”, Allas Sak is recognisably a Dungen album. The musical dynamic between the Swedish quartet’s members and their collective sound is so distinctive that they effectively...

Read more...

Reissue CDs Weekly: Bert Jansch

Bert Jansch: It Don't Bother Me, Jack Orion / Bert Jansch & John Renbourn: Bert and JohnWhen theartsdesk last caught up with Bert Jansch, it was April 1965 and he had just issued his eponymous debut album – a set which now, as it was then, is a...

Read more...

CD: Squeeze - Cradle to the Grave

The album of the sitcom. You don’t get a lot of those, and technically – beyond the title song – you don’t get one here either. “Cradle to the Grave” is the theme tune for Danny Baker’s autobiographical comedy currently on BBC Two, based on his...

Read more...

10 Questions for Composer Max Richter

Composer, pianist, producer… Max Richter (b. 1966) is nothing if not prolific, not to mention unique. His traditional training, which included Edinburgh University, the Royal Academy as well as Florence, under composer Luciano Berio sits...

Read more...

An Open Book: Laurent Garnier

Laurent Garnier, 49, is a key figure in the development of French electronic dance music. A DJ at the Haçienda in Manchester just as house music began to explode in 1987, he went on to helm nights at the Rex Club in Paris in the Nineties. These...

Read more...
Subscribe to New music