New music
Keane, De La Warr Pavilion review – hometown heartbreakSaturday, 21 September 2019
Keane grew up six miles away in Battle, making this night in balmy Bexhill-on-Sea as close as they can practically get to a hometown gig. Prior to their first headline tour in six years, they’re playing new album Cause and Effect in full in an “in-... Read more... |
theartsdesk Radio Show 24 - hot subcontinental sounds with guest Viveick RajagopalanSaturday, 21 September 2019
This episode of Peter Culshaw's occasional global music radio update features guest interview Viveick Rajagopalan, one of the hits of this summers WOMAD Festival. He talks (from 40 minutes in) about how he mixes South Indian rhythms and contemporary... Read more... |
CD: Rachid Taha - Je suis africainSaturday, 21 September 2019
Rachid Taha, sadly felled by a heart attack just over a year ago, has come back from the dead! He could not sound more lively than on this vibrant posthumous offering, definitely not something cooked up from tasty leftovers, but a well thought-... Read more... |
CD: Keane - Cause And EffectFriday, 20 September 2019
Keane were always the best of that post-millennium Coldplay crowd. Tim Rice-Oxley showed adult craft in his lyrics and keyboard textures on their 5 million-selling debut, Hopes and Fears, where the small-town specificity of Battle, Sussex’s biggest... Read more... |
CD: Liam Gallagher - Why Me? Why Not.Thursday, 19 September 2019
Liam Gallagher's 2017 solo debut, As You Were, took everybody by surprise. Not only did it show Gallagher Jnr to be still capable of capturing the public's imagination, but it also revealed him to be a much more capable writer than anyone had... Read more... |
CD: Renée Zellweger - JudyWednesday, 18 September 2019
Renée Zellweger already has strong musical cinema form, Her role as Roxie Hart in Chicago garnered her second Oscar nomination. However, playing and singing Judy Garland is a whole different ball game. The film Judy takes a late-Sixties run of... Read more... |
BBC Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park review – Pet Shop Boys, Westlife and Status Quo deliver the hitsMonday, 16 September 2019
You might think that being first on the bill with a half-hour slot at 1.15pm would be an affront to a band who’d had a 12-times platinum album and ruled the 90s airwaves, but if they are offended Simply Red aren’t showing it. A weatherbeaten Mick... Read more... |
Muse, 02 review - bombastic Brit-rock with a sci-fi themeMonday, 16 September 2019
For a band mostly known as a brilliantly ludicrous cocktail of other’s people’s sound-styles, the Simulation Theory tour is proof that Muse have become musical legends in their own right.Yes, their progressive rock is the combined conglomeration... Read more... |
Pere Ubu, Bush Hall review - terminal AmericanaMonday, 16 September 2019
Pere Ubu are much like The Fall in their dauntless explication of one man’s vision, and commitment to an individual, primal rock’n’roll, initially called punk, but pushing far past its limits. Where Mark E. Smith’s alcoholic dissolution hampered his... Read more... |
CD: Tove Lo - Sunshine KittyMonday, 16 September 2019
Swedish singer Tove Lo appeared at a time when female physical sexuality was being used as a raw, blunt weapon in pop, when porno chic reached an apex in music videos. Half a decade ago was the time of Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” and Miley Cyrus’s “... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: CaravanSunday, 15 September 2019
Last week in central London, the Covent Garden branch of the book and music chain Fopp was selling CD sets branded as “5 Classic Albums” and “Original Album Series”. Each collected five CDs of the same number of albums. Amongst what could be picked... Read more... |
Gazelle Twin, Mirth, Marvel and Maud review - sardonic folkSaturday, 14 September 2019
Elizabeth Bernholz, known on stage as Gazelle Twin, comes straight from a line of musical visionaries – rebels and misfits whose influences fleet through her songs like will-o’-the-wisps. Here is the formal, clever ennui of The Stranglers, the... Read more... |
