New music
joe.muggs
Metronomy have gone all out to knock off their quirky corners here, and goodness, it’s worked. It’s quite a move from a band whose eccentricity has always been part and parcel of their image – and they really haven’t done it by halves, in fact they’ve brought themselves a lot closer to their peers and near-peers in the process. But somehow, by zooming in on the archetypal, risking losing unique character, this album really demonstrates the level of talent that Metronomy main man Joe Mount really has. It’s been a roundabout route here – this is the seventh Metronomy album in 16 years Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The ECM label has been welcoming British and UK-based musicians to its roster for more than half a century. The very first were a group consisting of Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and Hugh Davies. Then came a bassist who, back in 1971, was called “David Holland”. Then Azimuth (Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone, John Taylor) and many more. The story of Manfred Eicher’s label could, in theory, have happened without musicians from these islands, but it would have been a different story.In the past few years a major welcome has been extended to Kit Downes. The phenomenal, Norwich-born pianist/organist/ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1957, popular music was given a jolt when the first electronic pop record was recorded. “Song of the Second Moon” was created and composed by the Dutch musician Dick Raaijmakers who was working at NatLab, the research laboratory of the electronics company Philips.“Song of the Second Moon” was based around a rhythmic pulse, and incorporated tape manipulation and multiple Ondes Martenots. It predicted the bubbling sound which became associated with Jean-Jacques Perry and presaged the machine beat Giorgio Moroder incorporated into his Donna Summer productions. It is also echoed by the 1962 Read more ...
mark.kidel
Combining ancestral music with electronic sounds has become so widespread that it’s almost a cliché. Dance floors now pulsate with sounds from around the globe, adding a welcome warmth and heart to the tropes of techno, house and trance. Malian singer Rokia Koné with producer Jacknife Lee stand miles above the rest, and offers an object lesson in working so subtly with the original that the richness of African music isn't colonised by technology but miraculously enhanced.The gutsy authenticity of Bambara music – Rokia Koné hails from Ségou, the capital of the ancient Bambara Empire – is Read more ...
joe.muggs
Mary J Blige is a monumental musical power. 30+ years, 14 albums, various labels and untold collaborations into her career, she still has the ability to deliver records that push everything else aside, existing entirely on their own terms and forcing other cultural forces to rearrange around them. Thus with Good Morning Gorgeous. This album has a stack of new and veteran guests and ranges in production style from lush Seventies soul to viciously sharp, UK-influenced electronic drill beats – but all of these are bent to Blige’s will: they all become adjuncts to her voice, song structures Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The former British Sea Power’s seventh album draws on deep reserves of melancholy and ecstasy. Several songs sound like elegies for Yan and Neil Wilkinson’s recently deceased parents. The band’s emotional heart – sometimes missed beneath the perceived eccentricities of their semi-pagan, mythos-building stage-show – beats hard, even as songs reliably surge with pop power.Losing “British” from their name seems sad, when BSP’s wryly nostalgic intent seemed so clear; it feels like a defeat by nationalism, but is of course the band’s considered, moral choice, as fascism again stokes patriotic Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
A decade since they picked up the Mercury prize for An Awesome Wave, Alt-J’s latest creation is highly likely to do the double. This is phenomenal work (but one hell of a challenge to describe). Those familiar with the band’s evocative, unclassifiable sound will understand. But if you’ve never come across their work – lucky you, you’ve got a treat in store. Distinctively idiosyncratic, this isn’t just more of the same. It’s Alt-J max. And that’s a very good thing.There’s nothing straightforward about their music or lyrics. In fact, that latter can be puzzling. Allegedly, a lot of this album Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Resentment Is Always Seismic – A Final Throw Of Throes is not so much a brand new album from Napalm Death, but a collection of tunes that were recorded during, but left over from, the sessions for their last disc, Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism. That said, there is nothing in its grooves to suggest that it might be a mere ragbag of off-cuts, put together to fulfill contractual obligations.Still powered by the righteous fury that has sustained them on their previous 16 albums, these Birmingham noise merchants are in no danger of calming down or mellowing out just yet. From opening Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For America’s oldies radio stations Sammi Smith will forever be about “Help me Make it Through the Night”. In 1970, she was the first singer to pick up on the Kris Kristofferson song. Her version took it into the US Top Ten.Although “Help me Make it Through the Night” was an important calling card for Kristofferson with mainstream America, Smith never again figured strongly on the mainstream charts though she remained and had been a regular on the country listings since 1968. As is made clear by a new collection aimed at more that the country audience, she was a singular artist.Last summer, " Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Since exploding to fame a decade ago with the single “Pompeii” and its parent album Bad Blood, Bastille have maintained impressive success on both sides of the Atlantic. To this writer’s ears, the bombast of their early music was off-putting, and the voice of songwriter and frontman Dan Smith unpleasant. Their fourth album contains a good chunk of more-ish electro-pop, but I can’t handle the cuts with horrible Eighties stadium choruses, major key cheese, and showboating by that breathy, whooping, and very particular voice. Overall, though, Give Me the Future feels like a grower, especially if Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Ride guitarist Andy Bell has clearly been busy since the release of his solo debut, 2020’s The View From Halfway Down. As well as getting his Space Station instrumental touring show up and running, he’s found time to record a sprawling, 18-track follow-up, Flicker, also released on Sonic Cathedral.Bell’s “other life”, as a DJ and producer of immersive electronica under his Glok moniker has, for some time, been an indicator of his willingness – and ability – to veer from the playbook and embrace other forms. On Flicker, however, this impulse is supersized. From shoegaze movers to krautrock Read more ...
Liz Thomson
What a joyous album for a grey winter’s day, any day in fact – a celebration of 20 springs by Le Vent du Nord, a wonderful five-piece band that hails from frigid Quebec and who make it their business to explore and collect the folk music of French-speaking Canada.If ever there’s a band, and an album, that demonstrates the idea of music as truly international language this is it. The sounds of Brittany and Ireland are blended in a beautiful and invigorating mix, but they are leavened by the plaintive melodies of Appalachia and the driving rhythms of Louisiana and much besides.Le Vent du Nord Read more ...