New music
Album: Yo La Tengo - This Stupid WorldMonday, 06 February 2023
Yo La Tengo’s new disc would appear to be an homage to the indie scene of the mid 1980s: a place before baggy beats became the groove du jour and where dancing with wild abandon was somewhat of a rare occurrence. Indeed, in This Stupid World maudlin... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Senders - All Killer No FillerSunday, 05 February 2023
The New York Dolls, The Ramones, Suicide, Television, Blondie, The Dictators, The Heartbreakers, The Shirts, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. From 1974 onwards, New York buzzed with bands. There were also Tuff Darts, The Fast, Pure Hell, Von Lmo and... Read more... |
Album: Shania Twain - Queen of MeSaturday, 04 February 2023
Shania Twain describes her sixth studio album as “a song of gratitude and appreciation. I was inspired that I still had air in my lungs” – and it certainly is a hi-energy affair, a long way from The Woman in Me, the sophomore outing that established... Read more... |
Album: Kelela - RavenFriday, 03 February 2023
Kelela, the DC-born artist, has been fusing R&B with experimental electronics since her 2013 mixtape Cut 4 Me. In 2017 she released her debut, Take Me Apart, a futuristic R&B album which consolidated her as a singular artist in a league of... Read more... |
Northern Winter Beat 2023 review - Panda Bear, Sonic Boom and Širom amongst the highlights in Denmark’s northThursday, 02 February 2023
It’s the sound of the sun. Panda Bear – born Noah Lennox – is singing in a voice with the purity and warmth of Brian Wilson. Beside him, Sonic Boom – Pete Kember – has more of a growl, a timbre which might make announcements in a railway station.... Read more... |
Album: The Waeve - The WaeveThursday, 02 February 2023
The Waeve is the debut album from life partners Rose Elinor Dougall (long ago in The Pipettes) and Graham Coxon (of Blur), working with James Ford (of Simian Mobile Disco), who co-produces and provides occasional bits of instrumentation. Their album... Read more... |
Album: Lisa O'Neill - All of This Is ChanceWednesday, 01 February 2023
Lisa O’Neill is a part of the new wave of Irish contemporary folk artists, one that encompasses the likes of Lankum, Ye Vagabonds and John Francis Flynn, all of them putting their albums out on Rough Trade, which makes the venerable English Indie... Read more... |
Album: Robert Forster - The Candle and the FlameMonday, 30 January 2023
Reflections on how the past relates to now suffuse The Candle and the Flame. The album’s closing track is “When I Was a Young Man.” When he was 21, sings Robert Forster, “I wrote songs, I was unsung, unheralded and undone”. His figurative brothers... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Padang Moonrise - The Birth of the Modern Indonesian Recording IndustrySunday, 29 January 2023
“Ka Huma” by Ivo Nilakreshna sounds as if a jazz band was taking on rock ’n’ roll. There’s a swing and sway, busy rhythm guitar and a lead female voice singing a yearning melody. An instrument which seems to vibes is in there. But there’s more than... Read more... |
Album: Sebastian Rochford, Kit Downes - A Short DiarySaturday, 28 January 2023
A Short Diary, a duo album for piano and drums, contains music of astonishing directness, calm and concentration. The story of how it came into being is fascinating, but it also stands on its own as pure music of luminous quality, and is bound to be... Read more... |
Album: Deathprod - CompositionsThursday, 26 January 2023
Ambient is everywhere now. After a quiet (lol) 2000s, when it rather disappeared into the cracks, perhaps tarred with the sense that the more cosmic sides of the Nineties rave experience were passé, beatless music steadily rose in profile through... Read more... |
Celtic Connections: Juliette Lemoine, Orchestral Qawwali Project review - fusion of myriad musical traditionsWednesday, 25 January 2023
In full force again for 2023, Scotland’s premier folk music festival Celtic Connections is back with its signature strand of blending and sharing musical traditions. On Saturday, emerging Scottish folk cellist Juliette Lemoine gave a superb early... Read more... |
