New music
mark.kidel
The Turkish psych folk band Baba Zula are at their very best live: the essence of their appeal depends on slow-burning climbs towards an ever-elusive climax, perfectly honed for a crowd that wishes to dance their minds away. Their latest release is a studio recording, but done as live, in this case cut directly to disc as part of Night Dreamer’s project featuring a startling kind of presence that appeals to audiophiles.The band have been around for a while now, and the music on the album is nothing particularly new in terms of style and sound – indeed several of the tracks, including “Çöl Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s a lot to like about Melanie Chisholm. She was always the Spice Girl who came over as most genuine and down to earth – not to mention the one who could sing. From the beginning her “Sporty Spice” image was quietly subversive, a body-positive role model well away from cliched feminine norms, something that she carries through to this day: in videos and photoshoots, though she’s clearly no stranger to stylists, personal trainers and makeup artists, she proudly looks her un-botoxed, un-fillered, un-filtered 46 years.She still comes over as a natural enthusiast, and generous to boot: her Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Alongside Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada were one of the last big acts to blossom from the 1990s boom in clubland and DJ culture. They are responsible for bona fide classics in “Superstylin’”, “At the River” and “I See You Baby”, and also founded the Lovebox Festival, which was named after their fourth album. Their last albums, the Black Light/White Light pairing, arrived a decade ago, and mined Eighties electronics to decent effect. Such biographical positivity is included to counterpoint the fact their latest album is a yacht rock horror story, possibly seeking the ears of Balearic ironists Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What happens when the hits dry up? And what happens a little further down the line, as the years of being on the charts recede into the past? For Helen Shapiro, the questions are answered by the intriguing Face The Music: The Complete Singles 1967–1984, a 25-track compilation collecting all her pop singles from the period covered by the title. Her work in jazz is not heard. The latest tracks were originally issued by Charlie Gillett’s Oval label and became her final singles.Helen Shapiro is the UK’s first home-grown female pop star. At age 14, she charted high in 1961 with “Don’t Treat me Read more ...
joe.muggs
This is a musical homecoming for Róisín Murphy, both geographically and figuratively. She may have been raised in Dublin and spent her gig-going adolescence in Manchester, but Sheffield is where she began her life as a clubber and performer – and it’s with Sheffield scene mainstay of almost four decades, and Murphy’s friend of quarter of a century, Richard “Parrot” Barratt that she’s collaborated here. And Murphy may have explored all kinds of experimental and pop styles, but the place where she’s always been at her most confident (not that she lacks confidence anywhere) is on the dancefloor Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The graveyard of tedious musical vanity projects – and the bargain bins of many record shops – is filled with solo albums by the lead vocalists of many fine rock bands. They may sell well initially, due to the power of well-financed record company marketing teams, but they are soon forgotten and adding to landfill sites around the country. In all likelihood, Corey Taylor’s disappointing solo effort, CMFT is destined to follow this path.Taylor is best known in the UK as the potty-mouthed lead singer of the excellent, bemasked fright-rockers Slipknot. Providing lyrics for six albums of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Whoargh! Steady lads!” Under that headline, NME reported that Kevin Rowland had “announced his return to the music scene with a bizarre national poster campaign depicting him in make-up and women’s clothing whilst hitching up his skirt to show his pants.”It was May 1999, five months before the release of his second solo album My Beauty. Kevin, the cornerstone of Dexys Midnight Runners, told the weekly music paper “I am not dressing up as a woman; I am not wearing women’s clothing or trying to be a woman; I am wearing dresses because I choose to (who’s to say I can’t?); I’m wearing MEN’s Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
It will come as a surprise to nobody that the esteemed elders of rap haven’t got a good word to say about the (present) leader of the free world. Or continuing crimes against black lives. If only people had listened back in the Eighties – which, of course they did in their droves (Nile Rodgers says they changed the world). And yet here we are.Sometimes, it feels like decades of progress have been wiped out. The Trump disaster has us all asking the same questions about racism. Again. It's almost like we're back in 1988. Returning to Def Jam for this, their 15th album, and thankfully glossing Read more ...
mark.kidel
Sufjan Stevens is an artist of remarkable ambition. His 80-minute long new album, with 15 beautiful and poetic songs, belongs to a long line of pop experimentation that runs through from The Beatles and George Martin’s Stg Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to Björk’s own highly literate and endlessly inventive mix of dance music and daredevil sonic exploration. He's as much at home baring his soul as he is evoking the turmoil of our times.The Ascension takes us on a rollercoaster of a journey, fuelled by the richness of analog keyboards – in this case a range of Prophet synthesisers whose Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Giant Steps doesn’t suffer from a lack of availability. A couple of weeks ago, two editions of John Coltrane’s 1960 landmark set were available in a central London music store. One was a 2002 CD version which supplemented the album’s seven tracks with eight bonus cuts: alternate studio takes which were not originally released. It was selling for £7. For the same price, there was a 2CD set teaming Giant Steps with three other Coltrane albums. Internet sales sites have even more keenly priced reissues of the album.The first CD reissue appeared in 1987. Since then, the master tapes have never Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
“Produced by Tommy LiPuma.” That phrase has appeared on just about every Diana Krall album since the summer of 1995, when the Cleveland-born mogul arrived at the GRP label – it would be his sixth and last music industry affiliation – and promptly signed the Canadian singer-pianist.The four words appear again in the credits for each of the twelve tracks of This Dream of You. They are the album’s anomaly. And also, sad to say, its problem.It is an anomaly because Lipuma, with 33 Grammy nominations and 5 Grammys to his name, and 75 million albums sold, passed away Read more ...
joe.muggs
Alicia Keys is a puzzling mixture. On the one hand she’s the hyper-achieving, multi-platinum, 752-Grammy-winning America’s sweetheart, all dimply smiles, positive-thinking ultra sincerity and the kind of showbiz over-emoting and singing-technique-as-competitive-sport so beloved of talent show contestants. On the other, she’s an undeniably interesting artist on multiple levels.Solo and with her husband Swizz Beats she’s a skilled and prolific songwriter and producer for others as well as herself: the pair’s work on Whitney Houston’s “Million Dollar Bill” alone is premier league material. And Read more ...