New music
Album: Suzi Quatro - The Devil In MeThursday, 25 March 2021
Over 50 years into her career, Suzi Quatro could be forgiven for taking a break. And yet, last spring, staring down almost one hundred cancelled shows, her first instinct was not to put her feet up but to team up with her son Richard Tuckey on a new... Read more... |
Album: Bheki Mseleku - Beyond The StarsWednesday, 24 March 2021
Praise gets heaped on the already well known. And that often leaves others in the shadows. I’m not saying that Abdullah Ibrahim doesn’t deserve the accolades – notably, “our Mozart” from Nelson Mandela – but there have been other genius level South... Read more... |
10 Questions for Vocalist-Lyricist Georgia MancioTuesday, 23 March 2021
This week marks a major step in the songwriting collaboration between British/Italian singer-songwriter Georgia Mancio and Alan Broadbent, the Grammy-winning jazz pianist who has played with Woody Herman and Charlie Haden’s Quartet West. Having... Read more... |
Album: Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra – PromisesMonday, 22 March 2021
My first (conscious) encounter with the music of American jazz saxophone legend Pharoah Sanders was 1970’s “Let Us Go into the House of the Lord”, a nearly 18-minute piece which, right until the end, sounds like it’s only just forming through an... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Linda Smith - Till Another Time 1988-1996Sunday, 21 March 2021
“I See Your Face” opens with a short burst of Phil Spector-ish tambourine rattling. The sort of thing also employed by the early Jesus & Mary Chain. Then, a cascading folk-rock guitar paves the way for a disembodied voice singing over a spooky... Read more... |
Album: Frida Hyvönen - Dream Of IndependenceSaturday, 20 March 2021
Track two on Dream Of Independence, the new album from Sweden’s Frida Hyvönen, is titled “A Funeral in Banbridge”. An account of attending a funeral in, indeed, Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland, it’s bright, melodically jaunty, piano-... Read more... |
Album: Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country ClubFriday, 19 March 2021
Lana Del Rey has turned pop’s volume down, returning hushed intimacy to the music’s heart. Her collaborator Jack Antonoff was also heavily involved in Taylor Swift’s Folklore reinvention, but Del Rey’s idea of Americana remains very different. Its... Read more... |
Album: Black Honey - Written & DirectedThursday, 18 March 2021
Indie rock has taken a commercial back seat, even if the music press still hasn’t quite caught up. Sure, there have been hit-makers, and bands that sell out stadiums, but overall, indie’s tide is very slowly retreating. Like any genre, it will... Read more... |
Album: Ted Barnes - 17 PostcardsWednesday, 17 March 2021
Ted Barnes is an outsider by design. Not in the sense of being wilfully awkward or outré – the music on his first solo album in almost 13 years years is gentle, harmonically rich, extremely accessible – but in that he has sidestepped standard career... Read more... |
Album: Gazelle Twin & NYX - Deep EnglandMonday, 15 March 2021
Deep England is Gazelle Twin’s reimagining, with the help of ambient drone choir NYX, of her 2018 Pastoral album. Based on their live reworking of the album from 2019, it is like the musical soundtrack to wandering through an unfamiliar English... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Be-Bop Deluxe - Drastic PlasticSunday, 14 March 2021
Bill Nelson knew February 1978’s Drastic Plastic was the last Be-Bop Deluxe album. In his essay for the book coming with the new “deluxe expanded” box-set reissue, he writes “that, as far as I was concerned, was that, the final Be-Bop Deluxe studio... Read more... |
Album: Loretta Lynn - Still Woman EnoughSaturday, 13 March 2021
Last month Willie Nelson wowed us with a new album. Now comes Loretta Lynn, a year older (89 next month) with her 50th studio outing. It must be something in that proud Cherokee blood they share.Born in poverty, married at 13. Four children and... Read more... |
