New music
New Year Honours: Arts stand aside in an Olympics delugeSaturday, 29 December 2012
In among the deluge of New Year Honours poured over Olympians (headed by Sir Bradley Wiggins, Sir Ben Ainslie, Dame Sarah Storey and Companion of Honour Lord Coe), there is a modest sprinkling over the arts world too. Roald Dahl's illustrator... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Japandroids - Celebration RockSaturday, 29 December 2012
It feels a little like cheating to call Celebration Rock, the second album from Vancouver duo Japandroids, an album at all. Featuring only eight songs, the whole thing is over and done with in a little over 35 minutes. Plenty of bands these days... Read more... |
Encountered: Richard Rodney Bennett, 1936-2012Thursday, 27 December 2012
From his precocious early years at the cutting edge of the musical avant garde to those many and memorable nights where just the man and the piano and that engaging gravelly voice of his would wrap around an American songbook standard or a 32-... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Christine Tobin – Sailing to ByzantiumThursday, 27 December 2012
On Sailing to Byzantium Christine Tobin's utterly singular music fuses with the amaranthine force of WB Yeats's poetry to create one of the most transporting jazz releases in aeons. From the iridescent colours of “The Wild Swans at Coole” and the... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Tiger Cats - Isle of DogsWednesday, 26 December 2012
How does one choose just one favourite album of the year? Should it be the one that knocked you for six on a first hearing, the one that you admired rather than loved but nevertheless admired an awful lot, or the one that sneaked up on you... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Old Ideas - Leonard CohenMonday, 24 December 2012
Leonard Cohen has been the king of melancholy ever since he set out on his slow journey through the dark side. Befriending the black dog means being aware of the finite nature of life at every moment. It’s also about relishing slowness. As he enjoys... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Gil Scott-Heron, K.T. Oslin, Motorpsycho, Feeling HighSunday, 23 December 2012
Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Begins – The Flying Dutchman MastersKieron TylerThis fine box set has a cuckoo in its nest which has to be dealt with instantly. Like Eric Clapton’s 1976 declaration of support for Enoch Powell, Scott-Heron’s “The... Read more... |
DVD: Searching for Sugar ManSunday, 23 December 2012
Thanks first to a David Holmes cover version then to some recent reissues of his records, I knew the approximate story of Detroit singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez. Roughly speaking: intelligent but borderline down-and-out Detroit musician is... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Sam Lee - Ground of Its OwnSaturday, 22 December 2012
One would hope that a man whose CV includes “teacher of wilderness survival” and burlesque dancer might be well equipped to bring a better than average sense of depth and drama to a set of folk songs handed down through generations via the oral... Read more... |
Lives in Music #4: The Book of Drugs by Mike DoughtyFriday, 21 December 2012
Such is the warts and all nature of the rock star biography that something as personal as the addiction memoir has become almost passé. Lucky then that Mike Doughty – one-time frontman of cult 90s alt-rockers Soul Coughing turned eclectic solo... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Yeti Lane - The Echo ShowFriday, 21 December 2012
The real test of whether an album stands apart from everything else is not whether it’s well crafted, moves a genre forward, is thrillingly original or is searingly confessional. The list could go on. The measure is whether it invites revisiting.... Read more... |
Lives in Music #3: Who Am I by Pete TownshendThursday, 20 December 2012
Pete Townshend was always the most literate of stars, not merely a rock icon but someone who believed in Art with a capital A – he even ran his own publishing company and had an editing job in the 1980s with Faber and Faber, where he made friends... Read more... |
