New music
Nick Hasted
Billie Eilish was shot through fame’s looking glass with increasing force right through her teens. A girl’s hopeful artistic dreams exposed her to infinite judgement of her body and soul, social and mass media magnifying every blemish and stumble. This sequel to her 2019 debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? transmutes the disorientation into a kaleidoscopic consideration of this self-described “trauma”: the crafted meta-autobiography of an adolescent mega-star. Rather than a cry for help in the Cobain meltdown mode that its lyrics suggest, it’s a 19-year-old’s sophisticated Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Following in the slipstream of wide critical acclaim for posthumous album Mutator, released earlier this year, comes Alan Vega After Dark by the former Suicide frontman. It’s a starkly different album to its predecessor, swapping concrete collisions and considered collages for the tremolo tones of vintage rock and roll, the driving krautrock energy of 70s Dusseldorf and the space cadet cadence of… well, of Alan Vega.Vega’s last live band recording, made in 2015 in collaboration with members of Pink Slip Daddy, a band similarly steeped in the spirit of rock and roll and the pure power of Read more ...
joe.muggs
The endless circles and spirals that dance music moves in can take you to some strange places.It is, after all, a little peculiar that a producer from California, who was first turned on to DJing by the edgy, claustrophobic, ultra-modernist sound of Chicago’s footworking DJs, should on her debut album sound like a blissed-out, hazy sunrise at a hippie rave somewhere in the English countryside 30 years ago. But Tomu DJ has captured a very specific mood and moment that feels slightly outside of time so well that this doesn’t even feel like a nostalgia piece. Back between 1991 and 1994 Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Despite being renowned for a somewhat fluid membership since their formation in 2000, it would seem that Liars has now become the solo concern of its only constant member, Angus Andrew. That’s not to say that Andrew has taken on all the instrumentation on this, the tenth album to be released under the Liars’ name though.The Apple Drop brings on board Australian avant-garde jazz drummer Laurence Pike, multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell and lyricist Mary Pearson Andrew for a feast of eerie, dreamlike and trippy pop. Indeed, things so frequently veer off-kilter, but into a particular direction Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Anyone in San Francisco on 15 and 16 June 1968 would have had a tough choice if they wanted to see live music. On Saturday the 15th, Big Brother & the Holding Company and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown were playing The Fillmore. That night, The Charlatans were on at The Straight Theatre. The Sunday saw Big Brother billed with The Steve Miller Blues Band, Dan Hicks (without The Charlatans), Sandy Bull and Santana at The Fillmore. On both dates, Booker T & the MG's headlined The Carousel Ballroom.At the Carousel, the Booker T combo was supported by local stars It’s A Beautiful Day. Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The folk world is slowly coming out of its long pandemic slumber, with Sidmouth’s month-long festival starting in the midst of Storm Evert’s high-summer arrival, and tours from the likes of fiddler extraordinaire Sam Sweeney, Eliza Carthy, and acclaimed newcomer, singer, songwriter and finger-picking guitarist Katherine Priddy, whose debut album is one of the most striking in British folk for some time.The folk genre remains in good health, despite crippling lockdowns and the touring impact of Brexit on artists whose incomes tend to rely as much on gigging among our European neighbours as Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Already Dead’s opening cut is titled “Youth on a Spit”. As it unfolds, Willy Mason declares “I feel no pain I’ve already bled / You can’t kill me I’m already dead.” After setting a pessimistic tone the next track is the “You’d Like to be Free”, a disquisition on a life where feelings of specialness haven’t been reciprocated by passively waiting for something to come along. “You blame the things you didn’t get…you never let yourself enjoy the thing you are,” sings Mason in his familiar disconsolate voice.The bleak outlook continues through “Gilded Lie”, where all the crooks have the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Scottish singer-songwriter Dorothy Allison pretty much defines cool. Her band One Dove was the first to snare Andrew Weatherall as producer after his success with Screamadelica, and together they created Morning Dove White: an extraordinary album that fused country and western melancholy with deep dub and electronica. It brought extraordinarily grown up emotion to the rave generation and creating the archetypal comedown soundtrack to the devoted few who loved it.Since then she’s worked with everyone from Massive Attack to Paul Weller, Death In Vegas to Pete Doherty (he used to be talented and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Willow Smith has done more during her life than the average 20-year-old. The daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, she bounced off her childhood appearance in her father’s film I Am Legend to a No 2 UK hit with “Whip My Hair” a decade ago, and has since released a bunch of music. This is her fourth album and, where her last couple came from a musically contemplative, indie-tronic, singer-songwriter stance, Lately I Feel Everything ramps things into the sweary pop-punk and metal zone.Avril Lavigne appears on the slick self-affirmation power-pop of “Grow” (“I hope you know you’re not Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The book included with this splendid box set dedicated to British jazz innovator Chris Barber includes a series of quotes paying tribute to his standing. Billy Bragg says "Chris Barber's influence on British popular music, be it through playing jazz, creating skiffle or promoting R&B, has been immense. His role in inspiring the world-beating British groups of the 1960s cannot be overestimated."Van Morrison declares “It is very apparent to the critical observer that all roads lead to Chris, from the skiffle with Donegan period, through Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny and Brownie and the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Anne-Marie Nicholson is a hard-working young woman from Essex whose career description is “Global Girl-next-door Pop Star”. She has incrementally worked her way there, attended the marketing meetings. Anyone requiring a CV that exemplifies the steady, data-farmed, disciplined path to contemporary major label pop stardom, should look to hers. Spontaneity and originality are out, every media detail is micro-managed, but a multi-platform, multi-territory project such as this can reap grand rewards. Her second album maintains the planned trajectory, conceptually streamlined, nothing unpredictable Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s hard to believe that it’s almost 50 years since I splurged a day’s Saturday pay on For Everyman, Jackson Browne’s second album. The title track alone was worth it. A couple of years on and Late for the Sky yielded “Before the Deluge” and “Fountain of Sorrow”. He’s written some great songs – and let’s not forget that “Take It Easy”, co-written with Glenn Frey, gave the Eagles their first hit. Another singer-songwriter from the fabled Laurel Canyon scene.Downhill From Everywhere, a pretty good summing-up of where we all are, is Browne’s first album in seven years and only his 15th in total Read more ...