New music
Guy Oddy
The Covid pandemic has meant, with both performance and recording opportunities at a minimum, that many musicians have had to apply a bit of lateral thinking to keep their creative juices flowing. Nick Cave, of course, is not renowned for running with the pack, and used his time by performing his Idiot’s Prayer solo show in front of cameras at the Ally Pally early in the lockdown period. However, not one to stand still, he has now gone further leftfield by writing the libretto for Nicholas Lens’ chamber opera L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S.Cave and Lens have had previous experience of working together, with Read more ...
theartsdesk on Vinyl 61: Amy Winehouse, Krust, Motörhead, Extrawelt, Sade, Chase and Status and more
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the penultimate 2020 edition of the world’s vastest, most musically wide-ranging, regularly posted, online vinyl reviews. This year vinyl boomed, especially in the wake of COVID-19, with gig-goers stuck at home but wanting new music. 2020’s sales are now heading for the £100 million mark, vinyl’s biggest year since 1990. When theartsdesk on Vinyl began, six years ago, it was a very different picture. All things must pass, and vinyl eventually will, but that’s for the churls! Let’s enjoy these boom times. So check out the reviews below, which run the gamut from the grungiest thrash Read more ...
mark.kidel
Odin’s ravens Huginn (thought) and Muninn (memory) are the great Norse god’s messengers, at the heart of a myth that was borrowed in watered-down form for Game of Thrones. The myth inspired a suite of pieces by Sigur Rós and a star-studded group of Icelandic friends and collaborators. Unreleased for many years, and only performed a few times, this recording from a Paris concert in 2002 will delight the band’s fans, as well as intriguing admirers of "post-rock" or contemporary classical.The band’s moody and cinematic style is very much present: wide swathes of sound, conjuring landscapes Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fifty years after their first album The Garden Of Jane Delawney was issued in April 1970, Trees seem to be better known than when they were active. Despite Françoise Hardy’s cover version of the title track a couple of years after it hit shops, the UK band’s debut album was a poor seller. Original pressings fetch upwards of £200. It’s the same with its follow-up, January 1971’s On The Shore. This one sells for at least £250.The band formed in London in 1969, split in 1972 and even though they recorded seven BBC radio sessions as well as the two albums, it took a while for their reputation to Read more ...
joe.muggs
As with so much in these unprecedented times, online performance is evolving, and fast: different approaches are becoming established formats. Some go ultra intimate – raw acoustic performances, live chats with fans – as if trying to strip away the digital divide. Big, serious rock bands with like Metallica and Radiohead try to keep their established fanbases sated with sheer volume of professionally recorded archive performance. DJs and electronic acts try and build on the models already provided by pirate radio or Boiler Room type platforms, while the more adventurous try and create virtual Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Tankus the Henge are one of Britain’s most energized, entertaining and spirit-raising live bands. If they were allowed to endlessly tour the nation, exempt from lockdown rules, they could eliminate the COVID blues, concert by ebullient concert. They have not, however, in their decade-plus history, achieved crossover success, despite their two previous albums being joyous festival-friendly romps. For those who enjoy their sing-along burlesque, their latest is a welcome addition to the canon.The qualification of the last sentence is important. Tankus the Henge are an acquired taste, their Read more ...
joe.muggs
Miley Cyrus has always been, broadly, A Good Thing. A Top Pop Star. A sassy, funny, puritan-scaring, omnisexual chaos monkey at the heart of pop culture, doing pretty much whatever she fancies when she fancies. Not that this has always meant she’s made good music, mind you. Over her six previous albums, she’s swerved through bubblegum pop, EDM, trap, Broadway showstoppers, raging dubstep, faux-lo-fi psychedelic chillwave (with The Flaming Lips in tow), straight country, and the rest. And while there have been gems at each stage of her career, there have also been quite a few hot messes along Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Gary Barlow’s Music Played By Humans is, in all but name, a Christmas album. Mixing big-band jazz, Latin and pop, it’s an assortment box of bubbly, broad-based business bangers deployed by the Take That veteran with help from a host of showbiz pals. Michael Bublé, Barry Manilow, Chilly Gonzales, Alesha Dixon, Beverley Knight, James Corden… these are big boots to put on the ground.It’s got “Secret Santa” written all over it – and not just because it’s a precision-built, one-size-fits-all, weapons-grade gifting opportunity for work acquaintances and pissed aunties alike. No. It’s Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
During the first lockdown in March, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong took the time to reflect “on the things that matter most in my life: family, friends and, of course, music.” In this sentimental headspace Armstrong began recording covers of songs, releasing them once a week and calling this project No Fun Mondays. This album is the complete collection of these covers, which range from interesting to flat out redundant.The intriguing moments of the album come when it feels like Armstrong is inviting us into his personal record collection. He plays “War Stories” by the obscure Seventies band Read more ...
peter.quinn
EDM bangers? Check. Melancholic ballads? Why certainly. Great vocal arrangements which switch from rap to angelic falsetto in the blink of an eye? Step right this way. You’ll find all this and more on Be, which is no mean feat given that the album – the second collection of 2020 from South Korean septet BTS following their February release Map of the Soul: 7 – clocks in at just a little over 28 minutes. This could never be described as a recording that outstays its welcome.With four singers and three rappers, the BTS vocal palette is impressively varied, with everyone chipping in on lead Read more ...
Tim Cumming
There have been Felabrations, stage musicals, bands featuring his sons Seun and Femi that have continued the legacy. There has been the slew of re-releases from his massive catalogue, and a number of films, including Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, and the 1982 classic, Music is the Weapon. In his afterlife, the legendary Fela Kuti and his music feels more alive than ever. More than 20 years after his death, and a funeral that attracted a million mourners (police claimed there were no crimes committed in Lagos over its three days) Afrobeat continues to pull dancers onto the floor in order to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“During 1975, 1976 and the first half of 1977 punk was the future but, after the highpoint of ‘God Save the Queen’, London punk already seemed spent. By the time that the Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ was tumbling out of the charts in early September, there had been two huge hits that changed the way I heard music. Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and ‘Magic Fly’ by Space made it clear: electronics were the future. And it didn’t matter whether it was post-punk or the despised disco.”So begins the titular writer’s essay accompanying Do You Have The Force? (Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Read more ...