New music
Album: Caribou - HoneyWednesday, 02 October 2024
Dan Snaith’s career has been a joyous thing to watch. Almost a quarter of a century the Canadian started out as Manitoba (soon renamed to Caribou) making a giddy mixture of dreamy ‘60s psychedelic pop, glitchy electronica and then cutting-edge dance... Read more... |
Album: The Smile - CutoutsTuesday, 01 October 2024
The Smile’s second album Wall of Eyes, released in January, is a thrillingly discomfiting album by Radiohead alumni Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. It has a coherent mood and flow, a great screw-the-musicbiz... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Why Don’t You Smile Now - Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65Sunday, 29 September 2024
The Velvet Underground first played before an audience on 11 December 1965. A year earlier, their two founder members Lou Reed and John Cale were beginning a period of schlepping around New York and New Jersey as supposed members of an equally... Read more... |
Album: Lady Gaga - HarlequinSaturday, 28 September 2024
Lady Gaga has made clear this is not her official new artist album. It’s a side project, inspired by Harley Quinn, the nom-de-chaos of the Arkham Asylum inmate she plays in Todd Phillips’ much-anticipated sequel Joker: Folie à Deux. The original... Read more... |
Album: Ezra Collective - Dance, No One’s WatchingFriday, 27 September 2024
Ezra Collective were faced with a challenge. The quintet needed to follow up from their achievement in winning the Mercury Prize in 2023 with Where I'm Meant To Be. That was a remarkable moment in itself, ending a 31-year drought during which a jazz... Read more... |
Album: Jaz Karis - Safe FlightThursday, 26 September 2024
The enduring good health of UK soul – the fact that we are treated to a continual stream of great records by the likes of Jorja Smith, Children of Zeus, Cleo Sol / SAULT, Maverick Sabre, Joel Culpepper, Yazmin Lacey, Ego Ella May, Michael Kiwanuka... Read more... |
Album: Van Morrison - New Arrangements and DuetsWednesday, 25 September 2024
It begins with a superb rendering of his 2018 song “Ain’t Gonna Moan No More”, on which Van is joined by the mellifluous voice of Kurt Elling, and which was recorded alongside the other duets on the album in 2018 and 2019.It then winds through a mix... Read more... |
Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve, Bristol Beacon review - so much more than a retread of the master's hitsMonday, 23 September 2024
Apart from being one of Britain’s greatest songsmiths of the past 50 years, Elvis Costello – from the early adoption of the rock’n’roll King’s first name – has produced a form of naked self-expression, blurred by intricately-tailored pretence.... Read more... |
Frank Carter & the Sex Pistols, O2 Academy, Birmingham review - Reloaded Pistols are a shot in the armMonday, 23 September 2024
Somewhat amusingly, the sign outside Birmingham’s O2 Academy on Saturday stated that the evening’s entertainment was to be provided by “Frank Carter and Members of the Sex Pistols”. In a way, it was a bit misleading, suggesting that the original and... Read more... |
Album: Alan Sparhawk - White Roses, My GodMonday, 23 September 2024
White Roses, My God isn’t a Low album. It couldn’t be. Mimi Parker, Alan Sparhawk’s wife and partner in Low, died in November 2022. And despite Low’s many musical twists and turns, Sparhawk’s public return to music sounds nothing like any of Low’s... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: New Jill SwingSunday, 22 September 2024
As the name of a music genre, new jack swing was coined in an issue of the Village Voice dated 18 October 1987. Writer Barry Michael Cooper was profiling producer, songwriter and member of the R&B trio Guy, Teddy Riley when he created a tag... Read more... |
Album: Katy Perry - 143Saturday, 21 September 2024
Life can be unfair, and Katy Perry can’t be alone in finding herself having to take the rough with the smooth. Still, anyone would have thought that with the excessive pearl clutching that accompanied the July release of 143’s lead single “Women’s... Read more... |
