New music
Peter Culshaw
GogolFest:Dream in Kherson, somewhere near the Crimea in Ukraine was the music festival of the summer. Admittedly, in my case and for many, having missed out on WOMAD, Glastonbury, Fez, and others it was the only festival of the summer, and the bar didn’t have to that high to satisfy a festival junkie in need of a fix. It was, in any case, a fascinating event, featuring not merely some of the best bands of Eastern Europe, but theatre, lots of opera, and assorted talks and seminars.How to do a festival that maximises social distancing was the challenge in a country where Covid numbers are Read more ...
Russ Coffey
"This party's over" snarls Fish on Weltschmerz, and, this time, it seems the big man really means it. After threatening retirement for many years, the ex-Marillion singer has finally called time on his recording career. His final present to the fans is a double album that looks back on his 32 years as a solo artist.Over the decades the charismatic Scot has moved steadily from mainstream to cult status. He's dabbled in pop (e.g "State of Mind"), hard rock ("Faithhealer") and punk ("The Perception of Johnny Punter). But, of course, the Bard of East Lothian is best known as Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Michael Gira, Swans’ band leader and last remaining original member, has a reputation for being an intense and difficult individual who doesn’t compromise easily. This is illustrated by the band having been home to some 35 different musicians since its 1982 beginnings in a desolate and dangerous New York City. However, as one-time drummer Bill Rieflin has said: “Michael is a singular creator and that puts him in a world where there are few members.” He is also clearly much respected by many of his former band mates, as many of them turn up as talking heads in Marco Porsia’s documentary of one Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It's the self-portrait on the cover that gives the first hint that something's changed with Marilyn Manson. The eyes are blank, his face weary. No longer does the singer look like the Antichrist Superstar. He seems more like a middle-aged rocker in the midst of an identity crisis.He says as much, too, on the title track. During the bridge section, Manson rasps "Am I a man or a show, or moment ?" What really strikes you, though, is not the existential questioning. It's the change of musical style.The song's gently strummed chords usher in a strangely plaintive baritone. On the verse, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The standard recitation goes like this. In the early Seventies a London scene evolved, centring on bands playing in pubs. Music was taken back to the grassroots. Finesse was unnecessary. What happened was dubbed pub rock and it laid the ground for an even more basic style: punk rock. Pub rock fed into and helped foster punk rock.This is charted by Surrender To The Rhythm: The London Pub Rock Scene Of The Seventies and 1978: The Year The UK Turned Day-Glo, a pair of three-CD sets. Although the specifics of 1977, the year punk was most boldly platformed are leapfrogged, the two packages Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Toots Hibbert may have invented the term “reggae” with his 1968 hit “Do the Reggay” but he has never felt boxed in by the genre. During his almost 60-year singing career, he may have recorded some of the greatest ska and reggae tunes of all time, from “Monkey Man” to “Pressure Drop” and “54-46, That’s My Number”, but has also dipped his toe into soul music and even tried his hand at a version of John Denver’s “Country Roads”. Got to be Tough is similarly a fine musical stew that takes from all quarters, never sags and is heavily flavoured with socially conscious lyrics throughout.Things kick Read more ...
mark.kidel
Ammar 808, named after the 1980s Roland drum machine TR-808 is the vehicle for Tunisian producer Sofyann Ben Youssef. He has been exploring, notably in Maghreb United (2018), a rich vein of resonance between the music of North Africa and electronic technology.This time around, the territory is Asian rather than African: Ben Youssef, who'd spent months studying Carnatic music in South India in his early twenties, has returned to Chennai and collaborated with some of the most open-minded musicians of this vibrant city as well as with some more traditional ones. Fusion can misfire, but in this Read more ...
Barney Harsent
If Doves have a “thing”, it’s that they do “big” with impeccable intimacy. Over ten years and four albums, they consistently displayed exactly the sort of connection that bands like Coldplay and Keane pretend to have. Huge, sweeping scores and broad emotional swells that feel like an old friend putting their arm around you and telling you you're not on your own.More than a decade since Kingdom of Rust, their farewell (of sorts), Doves are back, and not a moment too soon. Given the year so far, we could all do with a cuddle, sonic or otherwise.The seeds of The Universal Want were sown in a no- Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Music has never been more important than in these dark, dislocating and death-stalked days, fear and grief visiting us in ways once unimaginable. The lack of live music – the lack even of the possibility of live music in the near future – is an absence keenly felt. However much we love to listen in the isolation of our own headphones, nothing can ever replace the communal concert event.Many musicians have brought their art direct into our homes, but I suspect Mary Chapin Carpenter has touched more hearts than most with her series of Songs from Home which began on 18 March with “Edinburgh” and Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Seattle-born Allison Neale’s alto saxophone sound is instantly appealing. Her playing has the light wispy, airy quality from the "cool", "West Coast" school of Paul Desmond. One day last year, she spent just six hours (10am-5pm minus an hour for lunch, I gather) with three other top-flight jazz musicians at Angel Studios in Islington – shortly before it closed, in fact. The result, Quietly There (Ubuntu Music) is a completely delightful album.Neale’s totally assured sense of how to convey melodies finds the perfect complement in New York guitarist Peter Bernstein. And if there are echoes Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
In what would have been the year her father, the legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar turned 100, sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar pays tribute to him and builds on his legacy in this online Prom. The pre-recorded first half saw Shankar collaborate with electronic producer, composer and performer Gold Panda for a half hour long continuous piece, Variations. Written in response to her experiences of her father as a teacher, recordings of Ravi Shankar’s instructions on how to perform ragas were sampled, with Anoushka’s playing demonstrating his insights. The piece soon evolved into a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
So far this year, Live at Goose Lake August 8th, 1970 is 2020’s most exciting archive release. The album is a previously unknown soundboard recording of The Stooges playing at Jackson, Michigan’s Goose Lake Festival. The event was formally billed as Goose Lake Park – International Music Festival. Also on were Faces, Ten Years After, The Flying Burrito Brothers and The James Gang. As well as The Stooges, other Michigan bands booked included Bob Seeger, SRC, The Litter and more. It’s estimated that there were 200,000 attendees over the three days. The event was filmed and, although what was Read more ...