New music
Nick Hasted
The massed rock audiences which caused Dave Grohl’s old band such angst have fuelled the Foos. This tenth album was finished early in their 25th year, with a celebratory lap of 2020 festivals booked. Now these are anthems without an audience, released into a world in stasis, where communal closeness is an alien and fearful prospect.Then again, I’ve stood feet away from the band’s festival gale-force, seen the whites of Grohl’s eyes as he grins and sweats at his work, and felt indifferent to the relentless, undifferentiated uplift. Grohl’s proverbial niceness, the positivity with which he Read more ...
Liz Thomson
The Staves – Emily, Jessica, and Camilla Staveley-Taylor – have routinely been described as “an indie folk act”, and while the term folk has undergone a lot of stretching over the years the band’s first two albums – Dead & Born & Grown and If I Was – could broadly be said to fit, their latest, Good Woman, requires redefinition.The album – recorded in London with producer John Congleton – comes after a six-year gap, though the three sisters began writing the material for it in 2017. But matters of life, death and birth intervened, leading to the sisters regrouping in Read more ...
Guy Oddy
John Carpenter may be more celebrated as the director of such great cinematic landmarks as Escape From New York, Assault on Precinct 13 and Halloween, but he is also well-deserving of his plaudits as one of the founding fathers of modern electronic music. This acclaim has primarily been achieved through the mesmeric soundtracks that he has composed for his own films but there have also been a handful of stand-alone albums that have surfaced over the years. Lost Themes III: Alive After Death is not a collection of Carpenter’s soundtrack work, as might be expected from the title, but actually Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Arrival Of The New Elders is unlike anything Norwegian trio Elephant9 have done before. Previously, their jazz-prog mélange was as full-on as it could be. Attacking, hard and heavy. Now, a previously unfamiliar pensiveness has been revealed.While Elephant9’s sixth studio album still sounds like keyboard player Ståle Storløkken, bassist Nikolai Eilertse and drummer Torstein Lofthus, there’s a more measured, clearly less improvised approach. Tempi are slower and the interplay between the players is easier to discern. There’s a new space too. Storløkken plays more electric piano than before, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Dorian Benediction” begins with a muted organ and spectral chorale. Minimal drums, an electric piano, vibes, melancholy saxophone and a jazzy solo guitar fill out the picture. Over its four-and-a-half minutes, the atmosphere is haunted and haunting. This is music which appears to have seeped from the walls of a baroque church. It’s the final track of The Free Design’s third album, 1969’s Heaven / Earth.“An Elegy” is more direct but still as mysterious. It’s also jazzy and strings colour the arrangement, but there’s an epic quality as the song moves though a series of crescendos. This time, Read more ...
mark.kidel
Fela Kuti and Afro-Beat have achieved a kind of joyous immortality: his son Femi and his grandson Made keep the flame of Nigerian agitprop and party-music ablaze, with a pair of albums (Stop the Hate by Femi, and For(e)ward by Made) that both, in their distinct ways, pay homage to the man who started it all.Femi sticks closely to the family tradition, with as tight and powerful a band as ever. There is the intricate mesh of guitars weaving lines that speak to each other with compelling fluency, a drum-kit haunted by the constantly inventive spirit of the late Tony Allen, and a punchy horn Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title is in keeping with those of previous portentously handled albums from the Montréal art-rockers. There was their breakthrough 2007 set The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse and 2010’s The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night. The latter’s cover was similar to that of ...The Great Thunderstorm Warnings – a murky painting of a glowering sky hanging over a hostile milieu.On the new album, their sixth, “Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings” is the final track. After just-under seven minutes of soaring, stately drama comes a further 11 minutes of a low drone, akin to what Spiritualized Read more ...
Guy Oddy
South London all-female post punkers, Goat Girl caused a bit of a splash with their self-titled debut album and early, belligerent tunes like “Scum” back in 2018. Now, however, is time for its follow-up and, unfortunately On All Fours is indelibly stamped with difficult second album syndrome. Sure, they take on big issues like humanity’s parasitic relationship with the Earth; sexism and the patriarchal society; social isolation; mental health issues and the short-comings of capitalism, but instead of decking themselves in warpaint and going for the jugular, like the Slits or L7 might do, they Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Never have the early months of the year felt more cruel. Escape is what we all yearn for – from home, from ourselves and our shrunken lives. Never has music been more important to us and, over the last few days, I’ve had Steve Hackett’s new acoustic album playing and replaying as I’ve worked at long-overdue practical tasks. And while thoughts of Spain are bittersweet just now, I’m loving Under A Mediterranean Sky, which has energised me, despite all.It’s not all about Spain – the musical accents of Malta, Greece, Italy, France, and places farther east and farther south are evident Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“Hope”, from the debut album by 20 year old London singer-songwriter Arlo Parks, has a perfect chorus for these times. Blissed piano chords, lazy funk beats, lusciously upbeat synth dreaminess, and on top of it all, her sweet, airy voice offering support: “You’re not alone like you think you are.” It seems directed at those who quarantine isolation has swirled down into a dark place. There is much on Collapsed in Sunbeams that easily, chattily offers similar solace.Let’s be clear, it’s not a Covid-centric album, it’s a set of gently pensive sketched miniatures whose lyrics are a cut above the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Three plus versions of the same album. It’s ridiculous, but I’m glad.” The first paragraph of Richard Hell’s text in the booklet accompanying Destiny Street Complete lays it out. There are, indeed, three versions of his and his band The Voidoids’s July 1982 album Destiny Street on this double-CD set. It seems excessive.Reviews of Destiny Street at the time of its release were positive. Creem said “Hell himself has hit on a style – part Nuggets-era basement rock 'n roll, part speed-balling protest (not in content, but in attitude) rock, part confrontational CBGB psychodrama – that gives the Read more ...
mark.kidel
Bicep's second album fufills the promise of the first, released in 2017 to wide acclaim. Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar, friends since childhood from the city of Belfast, draw inspiration from Chicago house, Detroit techno, Italo disco and other now vintage dance genres. They appeal as much to a younger generation for whom their heady mix of dancefloor styles feels fresh and new, as to an older crowd for whom the duo serve up quality nostalgia.Made over two years and the result of a trawl through 150 demos, "Isles" reflects the impact of Bicep's move to London and exposure to music from Read more ...