New music
Liz Thomson
Guy Clark, Steve Earle’s mentor and champion and the singer-songwriter to whom he paid homage on his 2019 album, once said that “songs aren’t finished until you play them for people”. By which he surely meant live, creating that vibe for which the best system, or headphones, is no substitute. Nothing beats the communal concert experience, and Earle in the flesh really gets the blood pumping – never more so for me personally than when I was able to present him on stage in Washington Square Park last year. Live is what all of us with music at the centre of our lives are truly missing right now. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Outside his home country Madagascar, Damily was first heard via a couple of tracks on the 2004 French compilation album Tsapiky, Panorama D'une Jeune Musique De Tulear, an overview of the tsapiky dance music of the south-west of the island. He’d moved to France in 2003. His first internationally issued full-length album, Ravinahitsy, followed in 2007. Since then, there’s been three more albums: the last of which was 2018’s Valimbilo.The new compilation Early Years – Madagascar Cassette Archives soundtracks a previously untold backstory by revealing what Damily’s music was like on his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
After C19 delays theartsdesk on Vinyl is back. My initial policy, reckoning that new vinyl would dry up under COVID conditions, was to do regular lockdown mini-editions with the material already set aside here, until it ran out. That didn’t work out. The vinyl, to my surprise, kept on coming. Global crisis be damned! A backlog grew! Thus, theartsdesk on Vinyl 57 is a catch-up on the past couple of months. Due to these factors, a few more records I’d like to have covered were missed and a couple I should have covered this time are held back until June. Also, morose and sombre sounds didn’t Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What a joy. I Love the New Sky opens with the most un-Stones-like “Empathy For the Devil”. Rolling piano, see-sawing violin and snatches of bubbling synth course through a propulsive pop nugget with cascading harmonies and a McCartney-esque melody. Next up, the chugging “Sweetheart Mercury” is top-drawer art-rock with a similarly winning melody. After this, the album continues in equally fine style. Tim Burgess’ new solo outing is lovely. Clever, elegant pop.Overall, the vibe melds the brightness of early Seventies Todd Rundgren, Nilsson’s introspective reflections and the British art-pop of Read more ...
joe.muggs
This is an extremely impressive undertaking. how i'm feeling now was conceived, written and recorded in under two months, in isolation, with Charli XCX sourcing beats and artwork from a sprawling collective of regular collaborators and fans. The tracklist was finalised only in the last week or so, and even two days before release date, only “work in progress” promos were available, signalling that it was still in flux. It's all a perfect encapsulation of the singer's position as the emblematic artist of Gen Z (“Zoomers”), the generation who've grown up with video communication and Read more ...
joe.muggs
A singer-songwriter of somewhat mystical bent, originally from a forested island in the US Pacific Northwest, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith really came into her own when she discovered vintage synthesizers. In particular, her masterpiece, 2016's EARS, saw her vocals merging into the rich flows of bubbling tones, melodies channelling folk traditions from various corners of the world, creating an unmistakably utopian sound. It felt neither futurist nor retro – rather, of a part with Craig Leon's Interplanetary Folk Music or Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton Music and Poetry of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As the music industry slips into the rhythm of lockdown, so the spigot slowly becomes untapped and events, livestreams and similar start to flow more steadily. This week a host of big names are up to a bunch of different stuff, all worth checking. Dive in!A Theatre for Dreamers/Von Trapped Family Livestream + Dave Gilmour Live at PompeiiA couple of treats for Pink Floyd fans, from both ends of the band’s career. Most current is the latest home-stream by guitarist David Gilmour’s family. These take place each Friday and partly celebrate Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson’s bestselling novel A Theatre Read more ...
mark.kidel
The day that Little Richard’s death was announced, my friend the soul singer PP Arnold wrote on her Instagram feed, of a “sanctified boogie-woogie piano style that was just electric”. She went on, recalling first hearing the man’s undiluted craziness: “I loved it when he did that "ooo" thing after the “Tutti Frutti aw Rudi” bit that sounded like one of the high soprano sisters in church”. This recognition of the essence of Little Richard’s unique artistry comes from a soul diva best known for her time as an Ikette with Ike and Tina, her Sixtie’s hit “The First Cut is the Deepest”, and her Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Moses Sumney’s second album is a double, and splits and nuances in gender, sexuality and identity define its fluid nature. A 28-year-old Ghanaian-American who grew up as an outsider in both countries, Sumney is most interested in removing masculinity’s hard shell, and touching the tenderness beneath.The sensitively quavering male voice has become a grating indie cliché, but Sumney’s potently polymorphous falsetto is something else. This is soul holding forth in the confession booth, and indie rock locked in a brimming bedroom. Sometimes it’s beatlessly unemphatic, bonelessly liquid R&B. Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Like his friend the late John Prine, Jason Isbell is a master storyteller. His skill, like Prine’s, is to inhabit the characters he sings about so fully, and with such empathy, that it can be difficult to tell where the songwriter ends and the story begins.Take “Letting You Go”, the country ballad that closes seventh album Reunions. It’s a song packed with poignant detail that could be drawn from life: a father strapping his newborn baby daughter into a car seat, sleepless nights and first steps. But it ends with Isbell – father to a daughter, yes, but one who is four years old – giving his Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Like mellotrons before them, synthesisers could project a strange and deep emotion – something in the wiring had an inherent melancholy. Previous generations had often disparaged synths as dehumanising machines but, at the turn of the 80s, a new generation of musicians appeared who could coax them into creating modern and decidedly moving music. It was almost as if these groups had intentionally set out to prove the doubters wrong.”The strapline from the back of the Saint Etienne-compiled The Tears of Technology lays out the 20-track collection’s mission statement: to rescue synth-infused Read more ...
Asya Draganova
The Yorkshire metal veterans Paradise Lost have been around for more than three decades. The name of the band has become synonymous with a distinct sound combining gothic, death and doom to deliver a layered, wonderful type of darkness. Their 16th studio album, Obsidian will very much please serious metal fans who have followed the band throughout, presenting a natural continuation of The Plague Within (2015) and Medusa (2017). At the same time, even a metalhead’s non-metalhead neighbours might not complain too much if Obsidian penetrates through the walls: the album is riddled with brilliant Read more ...