New music
Album: Charli XCX - CrashSaturday, 19 March 2022
Charli XCX is the pop stars’ pop star. Working with everyone from K-pop megastars BTS to US rapper Lil Yachty to indie-rockers Vampire Weekend, her career arc has a meta aspect, initially personified by her joyously electro-punky second album Sucker... Read more... |
Album: Cowboy Junkies - Songs of The RecollectionFriday, 18 March 2022
The 19th album from Canadian alt-country rockers, and very beguiling it is too. As its title suggests, Songs of the Recollection is a covers album, but such a description is reductive. Good songs live on, discovered anew by successive generations –... Read more... |
White Lies, SWG3, Glasgow review - indie veterans get their groove onThursday, 17 March 2022
White Lies began their set as many bands would end it, with a familiar hit ringing out and an explosion of confetti over the crowd. Such a tactic made you wonder if the three-piece would peak too soon here, mirroring the band’s commercial fortunes... Read more... |
Album: Peter Doherty & Frédéric Lo - The Fantasy Life Of Poetry & CrimeThursday, 17 March 2022
Pete Doherty became a hunted man as he was falling apart, lent tabloid notoriety by his dissolute romance with Kate Moss. The Libertines were based on more solid ground at first - rickety ideals of old England and intimate rock’n’roll community with... Read more... |
L'Impératrice, O2 Shepherds Bush review - delayed gratificationWednesday, 16 March 2022
Born in the bedroom of keyboard player Charles de Boisseguin, bathed in a sleek, quintessentially French tradition of electro-pop, L’Impératrice materialised on the darkened stage at the O2 Shepherds Bush, with glowing hearts beating in unison on... Read more... |
Album: Electribe 101 - Electribal SoulWednesday, 16 March 2022
There’s a period of British club music that deserves to be much better appreciated. Before hardcore and jungle, before the Underworlds and Leftfields and other arena acts, came a generation who were much closer to the most song-based US house music... Read more... |
Album: Cypress Hill - Back in BlackMonday, 14 March 2022
“Maybe it’s just me, but I think you need some weed” chants B-Real on “Come with Me”, just one of the hymns to getting high on Cypress Hill’s tenth studio album of tales about gang-banging and smoking industrial volumes of cannabis. However, while... Read more... |
Album: The Boo Radleys - Keep On With FallingSunday, 13 March 2022
Britpop-era favourites have been critically buried for the most part, unwelcome reminders, much like a hangover, of a wild party now seen as a regrettable generational aberration. The Boo Radleys were outsiders even at the time, Wirral experimental... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Broadcast - Maida Vale Sessions, Microtronics, Mother Is The Milky WaySunday, 13 March 2022
In 2000, Broadcast’s first album The Noise Made By People entered the UK’s mainstream Top 100 and claimed the top spot on the dance charts. Three years later, their second album Haha Sound was in the Top Ten of America’s dance/electronic charts. It... Read more... |
Album: Midlake - For the Sake of Bethel WoodsSaturday, 12 March 2022
After a count in, the first lines of album opener "Commune" are “I’ve been away now far too long, lost and alone with no commune.” Fair enough. For the Sake of Bethel Woods is Midlake’s first album since 2013’s Antiphon.The second track is “Bethel... Read more... |
Album: The Shires - 10 Year PlanFriday, 11 March 2022
Seems odd now, but there was a time when many Brits found country music laughable. It was a common thing. For instance, when Keith Richards embraced country, Jagger initially thought it a joke. By the time I was coming up in the Eighties, post-punk... Read more... |
Album: Jenny Hval - Classic ObjectsThursday, 10 March 2022
Norwegian artist Jenny Hval is a novelist as well as a singer-songwriter, and her new album certainly has a literary approach to music making.Classic Objects is made of up little stories set to music - standalone units of narrative outside of the... Read more... |
