New music
mark.kidel
Foals, the band with a trademark sound characterised by the African-style intricate interplay of rhythm rather than lead guitars, returns with what amounts to the second half of a double album. The first half was released last spring, and this new release might well feel like more of the same. But the band’s powers of invention are well up to creating tracks that shine on their own.Foals trade on high energy sophisticated pop. They have been compared to Talking Heads, and there is a similar mixture of intelligence and danceability. “Wash Out” is the stand-out track, with cross-threaded Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s an easy joke to suggest that James Arthur needs an editor. By this point, the 31-year-old singer is almost as famous for his lyrical mis-steps and ill-advised use of Twitter as his 2012 The X Factor victory. You, his third album, seems to have been subject to the longest roll-out in history (first single, “Naked”, was released almost two years ago), and arrives at 17 tracks and over an hour in length. Prune away at least four soporific ballads, though, and you’ll find a decent pop-soul album; the insincerity of previous releases replaced with often gut-wrenching takes on broken Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The temptation with the 20th anniversary reissue of Ḣ-Camp Meets Lo-Fi (Explosion Picture Score) is to look for traces of what came earlier and pointers towards what would come in Iceland’s music. The album was credited to Dip, a collaboration between former Sugarcubes drummer Sigtryggur Baldursson and the on-the-up Jóhann Jóhannsson.The latter soon went on form Apparat Organ Quintet and instigate the arts collective Kitchen Motors. By the time of his 2018 death, he was internationally known for his soundtrack music for Sicario, The Theory of Everything and more, and solo works such as Orphée Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I had my first inter-racial relationship.” Moments after walking on stage and before the first song, PP Arnold is reminiscing about when she first arrived in Britain in 1966. The America she knew had barriers, ones she found weren’t apparent in “Swinging London.” Later in this show she says, “Mick Jagger invited me for a walk in the park.” That year, Ike & Tina Turner were billed on The Rolling Stones’ UK tour and she was an Ikette, one of the backing singers and dancers.Although she confessed “I know, I’m a bit long-winded tonight” during the encore, this appearance was about her voice Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Spaghetti Western guitar, rumbling bass, a rattling keyboard pulse and an unyielding forward thrust combine to delineate Somebody's Knocking’s opening cut “Disbelief Suspension”. Then there’s that growling yet melodic voice delivering sinister lines like “gonna fly to the sun in a helicopter…you wanna take a ride.” Recognisably, it’s Mark Lanegan. Equally perceptibly, his new album is another winning episode in the purple period he’s been enjoying over the last four years or so.The album’s PR material finds him declaring his fondness for Depeche Mode and New Order, a predilection first Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Canadian DJ-producer Philippe Aubin-Dionne – AKA Jacques Greene – has had a successful career in global clubland. One release in particular, his spacey 2011 deconstruction of the song “Deuces” by R&B star Ciara, which he entitled “Another Girl”, created waves in the world of house music. His 2017 album Feel Infinite demonstrated he had vision enough to hold listeners on a longer electronic journey. Dawn Chorus steps forward likeably from that set.It is an album that’s all about mood, rather than songs, although there are vocals here and there. The lead single, the lazily acidic “Night Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Prior to this week, it had been 35 years since hardcore punk firestarters Black Flag had set foot in the UK. That said, it was not without some trepidation that I made my way to one of Birmingham’s more compact venues to see a band who had once been genre-defining, get on stage and do their stuff. After all, Black Flag’s golden years were more than a generation ago, in the mid-1980s, and with a very different line-up. Iconic vocalist, Henry Rollins has long since hung up his microphone to write books, tour his spoken word show and appear on all-manner of TV documentaries – mainly about punk Read more ...
Nick Hasted
These horribly remarkable times can shake the strongest souls. Since the popular acceptance of The Seldom Seen Kid, Elbow at their worst have sometimes resembled their friends and supporters Coldplay, offering anthemic placebos to vaguely generalised ills, as Guy Garvey’s big, sentimental heart buried the odder, proggier band they once were. But this sixth album mourns the death of Garvey’s dad and close friends during a period of nihilistic national trauma, from Brexit to Grenfell. Bruising and unravelling marks its music.“Dexter and Sinister” is about lost faith and death’s certain Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Ol’ Black Eyes is Back Tour celebrates Alice Cooper’s 50 years using his stage name. He’d been around under other names before 1969 but Alice Cooper – originally the title of the band rather than the man – achieved success as the Seventies began by combining trash-glam drag with stompin’ riffy music. He’s famed for his theatrical shows but needed to be on especially fine form tonight to match support acts who are both riveting.First on are MC50, a supergroup iteration of Sixties Detroit countercultural rockers MC5, consisting of original MC5 guitar warrior Wayne Kramer, Soundgarden Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s been almost five years since we’ve heard anything from the mighty Lightning Bolt, but the tail end of 2019 promises to be something of a musical feast from Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson’s noisy, high-speed sonic riot. There has already been a re-release of 2003’s Wonderful Rainbow album and an announcement of European tour dates, but this week also sees the appearance of a new album. It’s safe to say that those who have been waiting for it will not be disappointed. Sonic Citadel is disc of adrenalin-soaked, untamed abandon, played at a deafening volume, and it’s one wild ride. Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Kano’s lyrics often sound like a wake, mixing mournfulness and anger as they raise a toast to fallen friends on abandoned estates, casualties of crushing pressures alien to the authorities who pronounce on them in the tabloids and parliament. Hoodies All Summer is the sixth of his increasingly ambitious albums mixing snapshots and panoramas of East London life, making notebook observations and cogent protest calls, during a fifteen-year career which has earned Kano his crown as a grime king. His musical sophistication, both slick and urgent, is a far cry from early hip-hop and grime gigs Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The onstage arrival of Two Door Cinema Club was heralded by a tongue-in-cheek video countdown that reached zero and then flashed up an error message, before asking the crowd to “try again”. In truth, the band’s own performance was never likely to hit any hitches, being the sort of well-honed and slick display that you would expect from a group who have been touring steadily for the past several months. That is both a positive and a negative.The trio, augmented by synths man Jacob Berry and drummer Benjamin Thompson, started fast, though. They write songs well suited to the weekend, to Read more ...