Incanting, declaiming, and growling, as if actual singing might prettify the Fontaines DC’s post-punk dirges, Grian Chatten has never sounded more aggrieved than he does on the Irish combo’s third album. Disarmingly, he also sounds younger on Skinty Fia than he did on the group’s brash debut, Dogrel (2019), and its startlingly seasoned follow-up, A Hero’s Death (2020). It’s as if the man can no longer shield the boy. There’s a logical reason for this, and it applies not just to the frontman but to the Fontaines as a collective and the places they find themselves in, musically Read more ...

Much has changed for Foals since their current run of shows were first announced. Initially scheduled to support 2019’s twin releases of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Parts 1 and 2, so much time has passed that the group are now set to release their next album instead, while in the meantime they’ve seen keyboardist Edwin Congreave depart and, on a rather less dramatic note, released their own brand of hot sauce.Therefore a sense of relief seemed to run through this night, the second of a two night residency in Edinburgh, a feeling that came across from both enthusiastic band and gleeful Read more ...

Jono McCleery has one of those voices that once heard, demands your attention, an instrument of richness and depth, and one that has earned him many fans. The likes of Vashti Bunyan and Tom Robinson helped to crowdfund his recording debut back in 2008, Darkest Light; he steered himself through London’s eclectic electro-acoustic underground music scene alongside the likes of Jamie Woon and the Portico Quartet, and released four more folktronic-textured releases with Ninja Tune.His sixth album, on the Berlin-based Ninety Days Records, was recorded in early 2021, over five days in Rotterdam Read more ...

Jarboe is a singer and musician who first rose to prominence as a member of Swans from 1985 to 1997. During this time, she and her then partner and fellow Swan, Michael Gira, also released three albums as Skin (known as World of Skin in the USA). The first of these, Blood Women Roses, a disc of gothic torch songs, jazz and electronic experimentation, has been remastered and is to be rereleased as skin blood women roses on 23 April 2022 for Record Store Day by Belgian label Consoling Sounds, under her own name.GUY ODDY: It is really exciting to hear a new take on your first Skin album with the Read more ...

Contrary to the title’s implication, there initially seems to be little movement in Arch of Motion. A note is held on an organ. Then another note comes in and is also held. Chords build up gradually. Maybe one or two ascending or descending notes come and go. And that seems to be it.But when Track Five arrives, the mood brightens and the sonic pallete becomes more broad. The drone on “Mending (Light Pressure)” might be an analogue synth. Next, “Conversation” adds a breathy wordless voice – celestial, wraith-like. After this, the crepuscular “Inhale” features what seem to be actual words. In Read more ...

Teenage Fanclub open their set with “Home”, the first single from their last album Endless Arcade. It’s followed by the title track, “Endless Arcade”. The first was written by Norman Blake, the second by Raymond McGinley – the album’s sole songwriters.Earlier, a Teenage Fanclub album would also have featured songs by another founder, Gerard Love. He left the band towards the end of 2018 leaving Blake and McGinley as the sole original members. April 2021’s terrific Endless Arcade became their first album without Love. A few weeks ago, continuity was confirmed when the "I Left a Light on" Read more ...

There aren’t too many musicians, male or female, who made it into Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time”, and "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Indeed, the former was overwhelmingly male, the latter included only two women, Joni Mitchell (discuss), and Bonnie Raitt.Raitt deserves the tsunami of accolades that have come her way, including 10 album- and performance-related Grammys, and another for Lifetime Achievement. She is a singular figure in what is still, after so many decades, a man’s world. (Janis Ian is another phenomenal guitarist whose contribution Read more ...

The Covid pandemic’s various lockdowns may have been a living hell for some, but there were also plenty of people who thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to distance themselves from society. One of those to thrive during this time was Jason Pierce, band leader and the only constant member of psychedelic space rockers Spiritualized.However, while the last Spiritualized album And Nothing Hurt was pretty much a solo affair, Everything Was Beautiful sees the pendulum swing to the other extreme. For, while Pearce may have played 16 different instruments during its recording – which took place in 11 Read more ...

What’s in the groove isn’t necessarily the end of the story. Sound is fixed into a record when it’s pressed. Get it revolving on a turntable, dump the needle onto it and what’s heard is what’s intended to be heard. It’s fixed. Nonetheless, DJs realised a record can be part of the route to something else, something which becomes their creation.Saturno 2000 - La Rebajada de Los Sonideros 1962-1983 celebrates a previously obscure form of sonic manipulation. In Mexico, DJs were playing records at a lower rpm than the standard 33 1/3 or 45 bringing their tempo down to make them more easy to dance Read more ...

Returning with their first new music in almost a decade, EDM supergroup Swedish House Mafia (the producer-DJ trio Steve Angello, Axwell and Sebastian Ingros) deliver their debut album with a sense of vaulting ambition and anything-is-possible belief. In their own words, Paradise Again is a “sonic adventure” to a “new world, a world of free thoughts, limitless ideas and space for progression.”There are, if we’re being generous, two ideas on Paradise Again. The first is one that anyone familiar with their oeuvre will already be well acquainted with: big, showy, glitter-gun production that Read more ...

Felt Mountain is not one of Goldfrapp’s most dynamic albums. So, what better venue to stop off in Birmingham to celebrate 20 years since its release than the iconic all-seater Symphony Hall? This the venue, after all, that is renowned for some of the best acoustics in the whole of Europe.That said, it’s not actually 20 years since Goldfrapp’s debut album first came out. That was in 2000. However, recent events have meant that a tour that was supposed to happen in 2020 got delayed until 2021, only to be rescheduled again to 2022. In fact, if it had got pushed back another year, it would have Read more ...

I have a theory about Reef. In the mid-Nineties, when the Somerset outfit appeared, they were reviled by London music journalists. This was mostly because they sounded like a hoary, unreconstructed early-Seventies blues-rock band. Those same journalists, however, were excitedly touting bands who lamely emulated Kinks-ish Sixties-ness, faux new wave, or a mixture of both (ie Britpop). So, Reef, arguably, just choose the wrong decade at the wrong time.As an electronic vanguard zealot I sneered at all retro. So, I too disliked Reef. However, cards-on-the-table, decades later my partner digs them Read more ...