New music
Thomas H. Green
“Trance boogie,” states My Baby frontwoman Cato van Dijck before submersing herself in the rising tribal rhythm of “Sunflower Sutra". Trance boogie is, indeed, what My Baby do. The song is decked with floating flecks of glissando guitar from virtuosic New Zealand bandmate Daniel Johnston on the other side of the stage. “Sing with me, brother,” Cato demands with a smile and behind his drum kit her sibling Joost leans into his microphone and harmonises. Behind it all is a housey four-to-the-floor beat, but their sound is all organic groove.The van Dijcks are Dutch and the band hails from Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If there’s one man who has got the chutzpah to sing songs about the Baby Jesus while flashing the Devil’s horns, it’s Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford. In fact, on the CD cover to his latest solo album, this is exactly what he’s doing – for Celestial is Rob Halford’s Christmas album. It is also a record which shows serious brass neck by taking a handful of original tunes and a truckload of traditional Christmas carols and applying a total New Wave of British Heavy Metal make-over throughout.“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” keeps all of the original lyrics but accompanies them with monster Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Abba fans can already have an immersive dining/dancing/singing experience at the O2 in Mamma Mia! The Party, and now, almost as a companion piece, is ABBA: Super Troupers The Exhibition, a show that sets out tell “the story of the band, their music and the era they defined”.That's a pretty tall order and I'm not sure – even as a dedicated fan – that Abba defined an era, but on the other two points this multimedia exhibition makes a decent go of it as it describes the group's history from first meeting to eventual break-up, and beyond.The four – Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Liam Payne is a Simon Cowell-manufactured pop star worth tens of millions off the back of music that’ll be regarded in a few years’ time much as the Bay City Rollers or Curiosity Killed The Cat are regarded now. Aesthetically an easy target, then, so there’s a temptation to take a counterintuitive approach and explore only what’s great about his debut album – and it does have its moments – but the short of it is that a wide range of mostly female 15-25 year olds are going to like this, and most others won’t.Where Harry Styles’ solo output has been courting an audience outside chart–pop, Liam Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As the number of sweaty bodies increased towards the front of the Barrowland stage, IDLES singer Joe Talbot had a direct message. “Keep safe” he implored on several occasions, like a concerned dad warning his kids, or perhaps a shepherd guiding his flock. For all that IDLES are a rowdy, raucous live band, there is undoubtedly a caring side too, evidenced throughout a night that was part rock gig, part good time party, and occasionally a wayward turn into a karaoke club.For all that there is tedious debate regarding the band’s authenticity (a decision earlier this week to launch their own beer Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Before the days of stardom on Jay-Z and Kanye’s scale, before Brooklyn became a millionaire’s playground, Gang Starr were deeply influential in hip hop and became pioneers of jazz rap. However, Guru disassociated himself from long-term partner DJ Premier as far back as 2006 and yet here we are, nine years after his death and 16 years after their last album together listening to the duo in stereo. A long legal battle resulted in some of Guru’s old tapes featuring around 30 unreleased rhymes being given to his family, allowing DJ Premier the opportunity to "retrofit" melodies and samples around Read more ...
Tim Cumming
From the off, with a bellicose Daltrey declaring “I don’t care, I know you’re going to hate this song,” on the opener “This Music Must Fade” to the ferocious vocal hitched up to a careering chariot of a riff that drives “Ball and Chain”, and the look-back-in-anger ravings of “I Don’t Wanna Get Wise”, WHO sets its stall as The Who thriving on the kind of energy that fuelled this band in the Sixties and Seventies, while dwelling in that wordy introspective philosophical space Townshend has occupied for decades, in interview and in song. The sound and fury of this bracing set of openers harks Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The O2 is usually a bright, sterile space before the bands come on. Its starkly lit US sports event ambience is accentuated by humanity milling around layered plastic seating clutching giant tubs of soft drink. Not so tonight. The venue has been open for three hours before the headline act is due. The lighting is purposefully dingy as 2ManyDJs and James Holroyd spin techno-flavoured sounds, warming up the crowd. The aim may be to reimagine this corporate space, with its horrid placards shouting Sky, Coca Cola, etc, into a warehouse party. The balconies are a black skyline with phone lights Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Natasha Khan is ending this intimate UK tour where her dreams first took shape. Study at the University of Brighton began 12 years in the bohemian town, and her twice Mercury-nominated, mythology-minded pop life. She could sometimes be found here in St Bartholomew’s, a vaulting Victorian temple with the supposed dimensions of Noah’s ark, all sunken shadows and glinting gilt, tucked just off London Road’s grubby shopping bustle. It was “a church I used to sit in and have a quiet moment”, Khan tells us. With only a second keyboardist sharing the stage, tonight is a very personal homecoming.Khan Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Despite their name, U-Bahn are from Melbourne. Instead of looking to Germany for their musical inspiration, their minds are on a vintage band from Ohio. “Beta Boyz”, the first track on their eponymous debut album, reassembles the key elements of Devo’s version of “(I Can’t Get no) Satisfaction”. The chicka-chicka tick-tock guitar is present. So too are the throat-swallowing Mark Mothersbaugh vocals, the rotating tin-can drums and primitive synth.Next up, “Turbulent Love” does a similar job by hybridising Devo’s “Mongoloid” and “Whip it”. “War of Currents” borrows from the de-evolutionist's “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the liner notes to the new reissue of 2001’s All is Dream, Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue says it is “a weird astral album musically, and yes the symbolism lyrically runs many layers down and deep – different coloured layers of rock, soil and ash on an archaeology dig.”More straightforwardly, Mercury Rev’s other mainstay Grasshopper explains “All is Dream was a continuation of ideas we hatched during recording [previous album] Deserter’s Songs – and [its predecessor] See You on the Other Side – but we were bolstered by the excitement that Deserter’s Songs generated.”All is Dream was Read more ...
Ellie Porter
“Are you ready to do battle with us?” bellows Johan Hegg, Amon Amarth’s imposing yet cheery frontman, immediately prompting an enthusiastic roar from the packed-out Brixton crowd. “GOOOOOOD!” He’s the most genial Viking you could imagine - six-foot plus with a gigantic beard and massive hair, a drinking horn holstered on his thigh, and a huge smile plastered across his face.Named after the Sindarin name for Mount Doom in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, naturally, Amon Amarth are currently marauding their way across Europe as part of a massive world tour (whose upcoming dates include Norway's Read more ...