New music
mark.kidel
Anaïs Mitchell should be a star: she sings like a dream, oozes presence and charisma, and writes songs of classic simplicity, poetry and depth. Her other outstanding quality is a natural modesty and a delight in just being herself on stage, and sharing the joys of music-making with her fellow-musicians and the audience.Throughout the scintillating evening of her Roundhouse show, she never posed, sought attention or relied on well-rehearsed patter. She acted as if she were in her own front-room: relaxed, at times endearingly hesitant, and at others fiercely engaged with the emotions of her Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The Dartmoor folk star’s latest album launches into a dramatic retelling of the voyage of the Mayflower, from its departure from the iconic Mayflower Steps in Plymouth (actually, the real steps are down to the women’s loo at the Admiral MacBride pub) to their landing on what the locals on the other side of the ocean called Patuxet. On the way, they set in to motion the founding of the United States and the decimation of the American Indian tribal nations.The local Wampanoag tribespeople and the newly arrived Puritan refugees – all 106 of them, including 31 children – would in time forge a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When it was issued in May 1968, “Fading Yellow” attracted no attention. It couldn’t have as it was the B-side of “Mr. Poem”, Mike Batt’s poor-selling debut single. The top side was good, very 1968 and along the lines of whimsical 45s like Donovan’s “Jenifer Juniper” or Marty Wilde’s “Abergavenny” but wasn’t a hit. Relegated to the flip, “Fading Yellow” was obviously considered the least commercial of the two songs.However – as deep-digging collectors later discovered – “Fading Yellow” was the true treasure. Over three minutes 40 seconds Batt, who then worked as an A&R man at his label Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
There Is No Other’s third track “Vultures” is about Isobel Campbell’s adopted city Los Angeles and the music business. Instead of assuming a hard-edged tone the song is crystalline, reflecting on “vultures, circling round… tall trees reaching so high, guarded question… tall trees don’t fade away with your ego… everybody got opinions.” Ironically, “Vultures” was recorded without knowing what was coming next.The first solo album in 14 years from the former Belle & Sebastian mainstay and Mark Lanegan collaborator was completed after signing with a new label in 2014: an imprint which Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The first time I heard Madonna, I was 8 years old at a school disco. Horrified parents, who came to pick us up as we jumped up and down yelling along to “Like A Virgin” in a fluorescent flurry of topknots, puffer skirts and lace gloves, subsequently lodged a formal complaint (it was a Catholic junior school) and thus, the spirit of Madonna, was borne into my story. Since those days of stonewash and crimping only one thing has remained consistent in my life – Madge’s persistent ability to re-invent herself. Now, 30 years later, I am bearing witness to a conglomeration of her identities, Read more ...
mark.kidel
Fatoumata Diawara knows how to please: with a winning and innocent smile, she wins the audience over in a matter of seconds. She has a vocal style all of her own: in her first song, “Don Do”, a quiet and meditative prelude to the boisterous show that follows, she seduces with sensual textures and a slight rasp unique among West African women singers, and which owes as much to jazz and gospel as to the traditions of her musically-rich country.After the first of a number of slightly predictable but heartfelt intros, in which she promises to give us an Africa beyond the clichés of poverty and Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Here it is, at last: Meghan Trainor's long-anticipated third album, scheduled for last summer, but mysteriously delayed because Trainor wanted to "add more songs". Not everyone was convinced by that story – there were rumours she was really planning to quietly scrap the whole thing because of a disappointing response to the early singles. But she didn't give up, and the final product weighs in at a hefty 15 tracks.About half of them share the same R'n'B-lite flavour of the recent single, "Blink". And yet, you can't help thinking it was really the first offering, "No Excuses", that she should Read more ...
India Lewis
John Grant’s entry onto the stage was unobtrusive, appropriate for a set-up that consisted of just a grand piano and an electronic keyboard (with accompanying keyboardist). He began with similarly unadorned songs, the ballads that peppered the start and the end of his set. Despite it being a departure from his more orchestrated recorded sound, a strong hint of the space-opera remained, coaxed out by synths and allusive lyrics. His songs are deliciously naughty, a sophisticated, rich sound that is counterbalanced by swear words and a satisfying cynicism. There were times when this wasn’t Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Doubters presume Kesha’s multi-million-selling success derives mainly from a decade ago, the time of her monster hit, “Tik Tok”? Since then, the thinking goes, after the gruelling, much-publicised sexual abuse court cases with Dr Luke, she’s more a figurehead for #MeToo, than an actual pop star. Not true. Kesha’s last album, her third, 2017’s Rainbow, was a chart-topper in the States and a Top Five hit here. Now she follows it with an even more ebullient outing. Given her usual bawdy, potty-mouthed, exuberance, that’s saying something.Rainbow was quirky, eccentric, angry in places at what she Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Folk music has always thrived in times of adversity and danger and in times when (to coin a phrase) “nothing is real”. All the above apply now and folk music, its roots in the dirt of our septic isle, speaks to us eloquently as balm, warning, and call to action. As ice caps melt and seas rise, as coasts and woodland succumb to the exigencies of commerce rendering homeless their inhabitants, folk music offers a reality check in an era of corporate self-interest.Sam Lee’s name has been on everyone’s lips, in America as well as in Britain, since his 2012 recording debut with Ground of Its Own, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Given Slipknot’s studied image as arch misanthropes, with their horror show costumes, aggressive posturing and frightening masks designed to put the wind up Middle America and everyone else for that matter, their imposing singer Corey Taylor spent an unexpected amount of time between songs on the Arena Birmingham’s stage this weekend preaching a gospel of sticking together in these trying times and of encouraging the band’s fans, the Maggots, to watch each other’s backs. In fact, he seemed particularly keen to make it clear that Slipknot are “not just dicks in masks” with loud guitars and a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Since this column last caught up with the totemic California art-popsters Game Theory, band mainstay Gil Ray passed away. He died in January 2017. He had joined Game Theory as their drummer and backing vocalist in 1985. The new collection Across The Barrier Of Sound: Postscript tracks the Game Theory of 1990 and 1991: a period when Ray was playing guitar and keyboards in the band. These became Game Theory’s final, under-the-radar years and, until now, have not been the subject of an official release.Gil Ray’s passing means that just half this latter-day, four-piece Game Theory is still with Read more ...