New music
Liz Thomson
Among those making her Cambridge Folk Festival on the diminutive Club Stage back in the summer was Angeline Morrison, a Birmingham-born singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who these days makes her home in Cornwall, drawn at least in part by its folk music. Her short solo performance was noteworthy, and earlier this month it was announced that Morrison has been awarded the Christian Raphael Prize 2022, presented in association with the Festival. She is the fourth honouree, the roster including Katherine Priddy and Nick Hart.Last night, Morrison and her three excellent musicians ( Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Who could really make head or tail of Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino? It was weird. Interesting, occasionally brilliant, but definitely weird. Now it’s time to almost come back down to earth (but not Sheffield earth, obviously). Alex Turner’s move from LA to Paris has surely levelled things a tad, and the result is a supremely confident, more mature creation with diverse musical references, orchestration by Bridget Samuels and a lot of falsetto.Is it any good? Yes. Is it a return to form? If you’re looking for the bangers of yore, no. It’s not pop, it’s not rock n roll Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Folk music? It’s all old blokes in shapeless clothes wailing on about ploughmen and fishermen, isn’t it?Not in the hands of the Bonfire Radicals it isn’t. In fact, their sophomore album launch at the Hare and Hounds not only challenged this somewhat outdated and clichéd view of Europe’s traditional roots music, but completely blew it out of the water. For south Birmingham’s self-proclaimed un-traditional folk band brought out reels, jigs, a murder ballad and plenty of global grooves – which had their audience bouncing around from the first notes to the final fade out at the unveiling of Read more ...
joe.muggs
You’ll want to love Loyle Carner. There’s so much about what he gives and how he delivers it that’s disarming, charming, brilliant even. His lyrics across this album are very obviously from the heart and took real courage to hammer into shape. He talks about his sense of self as he’s struggled to form it in the battlegrounds of race, class, masculinity and nationality, in clear and direct language that leaves you in no doubt that he’s telling the truth. He tells the kind of stories that are all too often completely pushed to the side in UK pop culture by the sellability of the slick brutality Read more ...
Barney Harsent
You’d be within your rights to imagine that Direction of the Heart, the follow-up to 2018’s patchy-but-decent Walk Between Worlds, would see the Simple Minds twin engine of Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill pull on billowing white shirts and head for the nearest massive windswept stadium, filling it to the brim with widescreen synths, anthemic singalong choruses and a staggering extravagance of emotion.And you’d be about right. After all, when you get to album number 18, no one’s expecting a volte-face, and no one particularly wants one either. Similarly, however, no one expects a classic. So it Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Rarely will the bar staff at the Glasgow Barrowland have had an easier night. The crowd for Beabadoobee was so youthful that the vibe felt more like a school disco at times, right down to clusters of parents at the back and on the sidelines alternating between keeping a wary eye on proceedings and burying themselves in their phones. Their offspring, meanwhile, were racing to the front eagerly, leaving the usually busy bar areas deserted.Given wild cheering greeted a roadie checking a guitar, it was no surprise that the actual appearance of Beatrice Laus brought on hysteria, both vocally and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
There are many reasons that I am obsessed with Florence Shaw. It's not just that as a long time sufferer of Resting-Bitch-Face I identify hard with her deadpan nonchalance, it's also pure props that she's brought spoken-word-set-to-music into the mainstream.Shaw fronts the band Dry Cleaning, a foursome with talent as luscious as their combined hair condition. The group's speech/song style occupies similar territory to Wet Leg, Sleaford Mods, Black Country and Yard Act. Their tracks consist of totally random musings that swing between barbed, bewildered, sarcastic and exhausted, and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Orkos was originally released in 1979 on cassette. The only album by Egyptian singer Maha seems to have been little known. The liner notes for its first-ever reissue say “it was not a success when it was originally released. While nobody remembers the exact numbers, sales must have been very limited and the project was quickly forgotten about and no follow up release was produced.”Elsewhere, the text recounts how a copy was found in 2019 in a “very dusty plastic box on a shelf” in a shop in Cairo’s Zamalek district.However, Maha hadn’t been a shadowy presence. She was in her brother's band Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Does the world need to hear more from Red Hot Chili Peppers? Outside the bouncin’ bro’ fanbase, a regular consensus is that, despite being one of the biggest bands in the world, doing their global stadium rock thing – with free added funk! – achieving the highest level of commercial success, they're not of actual interest.Then they release two very long albums within six months of each other, Return of the Dream Canteen being the second. Who the hell needs that? Turns out that anyone with an ear for joyously executed West Coast-flavoured pop-rock just might.The twofold keys to its Read more ...
Tom Carr
Last year, Brightonian metal outfit Architects were propelled into new territory with For Those That Wish to Exist, achieving their first UK number one album. In all measures a roaring success, they sonically edged into the uncharted too. Their first album recorded entirely without Tom Searle’s influence since his passing, with For Those… Architects bridged their metalcore style into something cinematic and larger-than-life.Freed of covid restrictions they return already with their 10th effort: The Classic Symptoms of a Broken Spirit. For Those… saw the band turn their gaze to existential Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The 1975 are always looking for a way to corral Matty Healy’s ambition, to bring focus to his scattershot mind, to perhaps after all manage a generational address commensurate with his half-serious dreams of what a band can still be.It was telling how easily their previous, sprawling double-album Notes On a Conditional Form (2020) tallied with lockdown’s insular alienation, Healy and co-writer George Daniel surrendering to a sense of rudderless drift with archly shrugged shoulders, seeing deficient attention and affectless ennui as promising themes. Being Funny in a Foreign Language is, after Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
They've been away for a long time, not just due to that virus. Sisters Rachel and Becky have been busy with other projects including a score for Mackenzie Crook's Worzel Gummidge and works inspired by Emily Bronte and Molly Drake. So this album feels overdue. There are many who will revel in this delicious scoop of accessible and enjoyable folk. There is no fustiness here, no shanties or jigs. But the anticipated harmonies are as moving as ever – cutting through 2022's nonsense to deliver something achingly pure. Opener "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry" is an old song from Orkney Read more ...