New music
Guy Oddy
Back in the mid-'80s, in a time before acid house and Bez’s freaky dancing, there was a type of audience that seemed endemic at indie gigs and that just didn’t want to dance. Hordes of blokes (and it was mainly blokes) would stand facing the stage with their feet firmly planted on the floor, moving only to raise pints of lager to their lips and maybe to clap between songs. Playing to those kinds of crowds must have been soul-destroying, especially for musicians whose tunes were particularly aimed at getting hips swaying.Jane Weaver’s show at Birmingham’s Hare and Hounds felt like a trip Read more ...
mark.kidel
Music and therapy have always been closely connected – it is indeed possible that music grew out of a quest for a kind of medicine for the body and soul. Jon Hopkins’s latest adventure explores the possibilities of not only quietening the mind, but opening the heart.This is not the lulling (and irritating) New Age Muzak that accompanies massage and relaxation sessions, but something that goes much deeper. Hopkins recommends that this long "suite" in which each section floats from one track to the next should be listened to in one go, preferably in darkness. I would add that the impact Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any compilation with a track credited to “Unknown Artist” is always going to entice, especially when it’s one which goes the full way by digging into original master tapes to find the best audio sources and previously unearthed nuggets. In this case, it’s not known who recorded “To Make a Lie”, a dark, menacing cut where a disembodied voice intones about the threat of a giant willow tree (“it’s coming!”), evil, pain and walking into eternity over a doomy organ, spiralling guitar and draggy drums. As it ends – a female scream. Bad trip vibes.“To Make a Lie” was found in the archives associated Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Peter Culshaw’s occasional global music radio show returns with a two-hour conversation with one of the most innovative and enduring post-punk artists.TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW CLICK THIS LINKMatt Johnson, under his nom de guerre The The emerged into the shiny 1980s with some music that has lasted more than most, notably with the album Soul Mining with its classic songs and mix of despair and euphoria.With its warm lyrics and unusual-for-the-time sounds like accordion and melodica, his work was opposite to the ”Cold Wave” of the time with its Numanesque synths and automaton chic. Other Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s been almost 10 years since Bangles’ front woman Susanna Hoffs has released any original tunes, preferring instead to go for unexpected songs by reasonably well-known artists.This is a pity, as she’s had a hand in writing more than a few cracking tracks over the years – “Hero Takes a Fall” and “Dover Beach” from the Bangles’ first album All Over the Place being particularly notable examples. Still, if the muse isn’t giving up the goods, improbable cover versions is as good a way to go as any.So it is with her latest solo album, Bright Lights, which features reinterpretations of songs by ( Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Immortality is reserved for monotheistic religions and Marvel superheroes, but in the material world, we also know Abba’s songs are ageless and will not die. After all, they have their Abbatars; we have our abattoirs.Their songs from the Seventies stand as the finest examples of 20th century European sacred music in the popular tradition. Their combination of profound melancholy and joyous uplift reveals itself in song after song. As the decades go by, the power of those uplifting songs of yearning and sadness grows more potent, as if they mean more to you the further away you are from the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In an ideal world, we would want the flashbulbs of fame that have been focused on Diana Ross for virtually her entire life to reveal a figure who is not just regal but also ageless. We would want her to be able to connect with us emotionally through the strength and character of her singing, just as she could fifty or more years ago.We would want her songs – this is her first album of new songs for two decades – to be full of class and sass, for the people around her to support this never-fading dream. Ross and her team would reassure us that this world can be made a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bergen’s Electric Eye’s pithy description of themselves is “psych-space-drone-rock from Norway.” They also say they “play droned out psych-rock inspired by the blues, India and the ever-more expanding universe.” Horizons is their fourth studio album.They’ve been honing what they do for just short of a decade. Their drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde has also regularly played with folk and jazz individualists Building Instrument and Erlend Apneseth Trio. Guitarist and keyboard player Njål Clementsen has been in post-rock/psych-rock bands The Low Frequency In Stereo and The Megaphonic Thrift. Amongst Read more ...
India Lewis
Composed entirely of their 2021 release, Terrain, Portico Quartet’s Friday night concert at St John at Hackney was a beautiful performance, albeit slightly marred by a low stage and a chatty audience.The crowd itself was a cross-section of fans from the slightly more left-field end of ambient: hipsters in beanies with annoyingly large backpacks, earnest-looking edgy couples with interestingly long hair, the more normal gig attendees clutching warm beers, and the uncomfortable-looking older man. The setting in the church itself couldn’t have been more fitting, the interior a stark white, Read more ...
Nick Hasted
It’s hard to navigate the gap between Ed Sheeran’s ordinary songs and the rarefied air of his career’s stellar orbit, which he now breathes with Adele and Chris Martin - the rump aristos of a once ruling rock culture. The image of him as a modern troubadour alone with his guitar at Wembley Stadium in 2015 symbolises both his admirable personal achievement, and something vacant at singer-songwriting’s pop summit. This fourth solo album arrives in the wake of wedding his childhood friend Cherry Seaborn in 2019, and her having their child the next year, events which understandably dominate =. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Sun Shines Here - The Roots Of Indie-Pop 1980-1984 is three-CD set in a clamshell box with 74 tracks. The opener is “Better Scream”, January 1980’s debut single from Wah Heat! The closing track was issued in November 1984: The Jesus And Mary Chain’s first single “Upside Down”. In between: Mo-Dettes, The Monochrome Set, Microdisney and Marine Girls. Lori & The Chameleons, Ludus, The Loft and The Lines too. There’re also the pre-fame Pulp, Prefab Sprout, Hurrah! and lesser-knowns like Junes Brides offshoot The Ringing and The Page Boys, who spawned 1000 Violins.The Sun Shines Here is Read more ...
Tim Cumming
If you were looking for a word to describe Black String in performance at Grand Junction in Paddington, before the high altar of the church of St Mary Magdalene, itself a pinnacle of Victorian neo-Gothic bravura, then that word would be “intense”. Intensely intense. More intense than a blooming bank of Intensia.They may fold in to their sound influences from global jazz, post-rock, Korean folk and free improvisation, but the array of instruments they use to raise the unholy walls of sound in their music, from ancient folk instruments to squalling electric guitars, makes their performance one Read more ...