New music
Thomas H. Green
Jason Isbell is a bigger noise on the other side of the Atlantic than he is in the UK but his last three albums have, nonetheless, bothered the middle-regions of the British album charts. He’s built a critically lauded career with his band The 400 Unit since leaving Drive-By Truckers a decade-and-a-half ago, merging country with rock and various southern US styles. His latest is a covers album benefit for three non-profit social justice organizations, including Black Lives Matter, and is, he says, a celebration of Georgia “turning blue” (voting Democrat) in last year’s US election. Happily it Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Initially, it’s about the voice. Thirteen seconds into the first track, it arrives: close-to disembodied, delivering lyrics as if they were a psalm, yet still melodic. Just over a minute in, there’s a shift into an ascending-descending chorus. The instrumentation is a gauzy wash, adroitly balancing the impressionistic with an understated rhythmic bed. Apart from its tougher seventh cut – evoking PJ Harvey if she were collaborating with Mazzy Star – this opener establishes the tone of Where The Viaduct Looms, a collaborative album by Nell Smith and The Flaming Lips. It’s her first LP.All nine Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
With its themes of racism, violence, oppression and climate change, Marvin Gaye's 1971 album, What's Going On, is as pertinent today as it was when it was released 50 years ago. Presented by Tomorrow’s Warriors, Nu Civilisation Orchestra played this seminal body of work with all the soul and spirit the record merits, in a performance that was both inherently faithful to the album, but still unique.Musical Director Peter Edwards – who had expertly arranged Gaye’s music for the group – described their goal as wanting the audience to feel like they were "inside the record". The music was paired Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“How to explain Theresa May?” Grace Petrie muses from the Summerhall stage as she introduces decade-old opener “Farewell To Welfare”. “Well, in 2010, she was as bad as we thought it was going to get.”That is, on the face of it, the problem with being a protest singer: in a just world, your songs should ultimately lose their potency. But the crowd at this twice-rescheduled Edinburgh show have been waiting a long time to hear Petrie’s powerful messages of solidarity across class, race, gender and ability lines and while the names may change, the sentiments are as relevant as ever.Lockdowns Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Like most of the best things in life, it cannot be denied that the music of Sunn O))) is an acquired taste – and most certainly not for the faint hearted. Crushing and apocalyptic soundscapes dominate their largely instrumental drone metal, which is soaked in reverb, feedback and dissonant guitar sounds that focus fully on atmosphere rather than tunes and melodies.Metta, Benevolence, a set recorded at the BBC Maida Vale studios for Mary Anne Hobbs’ Radio 6 show, during their October 2019 tour, sticks very much to Sunn O)))’s beatless, yet heavier-than-heavy template. However, with additional Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The premise driving Lenny Kaye Presents Lightning Striking is the idea that, as it’s put here, “transformative moments in rock ’n’ roll” not only happen at a particular time but in particular places too. Somewhere struck by that lightning at a certain point becomes pivotal, influential and a node from which influences ripple outward – impacting on the next such strike. It might take a little while for this to be seen – early rumblings precede the lightning, but there’s usually a year which becomes fundamental.Lenny Kaye may be best known as Patti Smith’s foil, but there’s a whole lot more – Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Miles Davis stole Charles Lloyd’s band, and much else. It was Lloyd’s classic quartet with Keith Jarrett on piano, drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Cecil McBee, not Miles, who were the first jazz act to play San Francisco’s Fillmore and gain an avid rock audience; their album Forest Flower: Live In Monterey (1967) sold a million, making Lloyd, with his Afro and hippie threads and exploratory, spiritually balmy sound a star. Playing acoustically, he built jazz’s bridge to rock, only for Miles to lure Jarrett and DeJohnette away, and Lloyd himself to seemingly vanish into the Californian Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
“Take Jazz Seriously,” wrote Maurice Ravel after his American trip in 1928. This past week of the 2021 EFG London Jazz Festival has seen that advice itself being taken seriously, with a bunching of projects and premieres. Jazz musicians have been welcomed in to work with London orchestras. The fruition of months of preparatory work has been on show.Soweto Kinch’s White Juju is a 75-minute “artistic response to a year of pandemic, racial animus and culture wars”, consisting of 10 pieces. It received a loud, prolonged, vociferous and very enthusiastic reception in a nearly-full Barbican Hall. Read more ...
Katie Colombus
For those of you who didn’t think it was possible for Adele to up her stakes in the game of soul-baring, think again. Her first album in six years is here and it is as raw as it is rowdy, as searing as it is silk, as relatable as it is enjoyably escapist.30 begins with warm-up song “Strangers By Nature”, a retro kitsch drift with dreamy strings and the melancholic caress of Karen Carpenter, ending with a spoken word line in that distinct Tottenham accent, “Alright then I'm ready”. Deep breath.The first single, as you will know given the abundance of radio play in the feverish anticipation of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After its mid-September release Low’s 13th studio album Hey What hit 23 on the UK’s Official Charts, their highest ranking to date. Back in early 2001, Things We Lost in the Fire topped out at number 81. Despite the increasing profile, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk remain largely autonomous. There’s the odd change of bass player, label or producer, but their work together as Low is self-determined. They do what they want, and they define Low.They live in Duluth, Minnesota – where Bob Dylan was born – are married, have children and are Mormons. During the pandemic, they opened the door to Read more ...
Barney Harsent
A poet I know once went to a boarding school to deliver an open class on poetry. Part of the day consisted of the children producing poems of their own, which their guest teacher then looked over and discussed with them. Almost every one was about flight, or escape into vast, open swathes of nature. These weren’t poems, he realised, these were the yearning, silent screams of perpetual prisoners.I was reminded of this when listening to Flying Dream 1, the ninth studio album from big-hearted rock band Elbow. Even pop stars with a nifty niche in singalong anthems couldn’t escape a pandemic- Read more ...
peter.quinn
A fascinating song list that juxtaposed originals with musical theatre, pop songs, Brazilian music and more. An inventive, listening band – take a bow Glenn Zaleski (piano), Alexa Tarantino (flute), Marvin Sewell (guitar), Yasushi Nakamura (bass) and Keito Ogawa (percussion) – who supported singer and song in the most empathetic way possible. And a central performance that combined strength and vulnerability, humour and irony, a strikingly beautiful timbre, and an absolute focus on the lyrics and the story.Vocalist, composer and three-time Grammy winner Cécile McLorin Salvant, together with Read more ...