New music
Russ Coffey
In metal circles, Volbeat are a phenomenon. For almost 20 years the Danish rockers have been filling venues with their iconic combination of bulldozer riffs and hip-shaking Elvis swagger. It's the tension between these two contrasting influences that underpins their success. Or, at least, so far. Now, the recipe has changed: the tension has gone. The flavours have merged. It all sounds a lot softer. Fans won't be altogether surprised. Songwriter Michael Poulsen's music has been getting progressively lighter for years. What really strikes you is how mainstream it now feels. Other than the Read more ...
Owen Richards
Rock ‘n’ roll. That’s what was promised. It was emblazoned on the organ for all to see. And if that visual guarantee was too subtle, the set began with “Rock 'n’ Roll Star”. Only, despite the swagger, Liam Gallagher doesn’t really live up to the promise live. It’s loud enough, and the songs talk the talk, but this balmy night in Malta appeared to be just another day in the office for the former Oasis frontman.That’s not to say the evening wasn’t enjoyable. In fact, for anyone half-interested in music during the 90s, it’s nearly impossible not to grin ear to ear during the opening strains of “ Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“I’m talking about these songs in more depth than I usually do, revealing a few secrets along the way,” says a black–jeaned, cowboy-booted Lucinda Williams after singing “Right in Time”, the achingly erotic first song on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, her breakthrough, Grammy-winning, never-bettered album of 1998. She’s on a year-long, sell-out tour celebrating the record’s 20th anniversary, in which she performs the album in full, plus a few other numbers.Playing full-album gigs has become quite a trend, but this has an added dimension. The set is a kind of memoir, complete with old home Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
As a recent exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland showed, attempting to tell the history of Scottish popular music in an afternoon – or on one single album – is no mean feat. Though Karine Polwart’s Scottish Songbook covers project spans time and genre, from Big Country to Biffy Clyro, her choices are thematically linked by what they say about Scotland both now and in the past, and made into a coherent whole thanks to the folk musician’s skill for taking ownership of the traditional.The out-of-context cover has long been a staple of rock shows (and Radio 1’s Live Lounge), but Polwart’ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Britain’s musical eruption of 1977 wasn’t just about the now. As the new box set 1977 – The Year Punk Broke amply demonstrates, the flux allowed more than first-timers through the door. Seasoned gig-circuit regulars Stranglers got a leg up. A band called The Rings, featuring former Pink Fairies, Pretty Things and Tomorrow member Twink, issued their one single in 1977. Andy Ellison, Radio Stars’ singer, had a similar pedigree – in the Sixties, he had been in John’s Children, alongside a short-stay Marc Bolan. Radio Stars bassist had been in Sparks, and most of the band were in Seventies almost Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s not every artist who performs “living funerals” along the way as she tours. Then again, American singer Emily Cross is far from the average rocker. Cross Record was previously Cross and her husband Dan Duszynski, who were also both in the slowcore indie “supergroup” Loma. However, this third Cross Record album was made solo, after a move to Mexico following her divorce, also alongside newfound sobriety. It is a more direct, thoughtful creature than its predecessors, yet musically even more floaty and spectral.The default setting for the album is hazy tone music speckled with twinkling Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The sound of Blood Year is mesmerising, yet also brutal, like a vast sonic ocean it explodes with relentless violence and then ebbs back to meander in the musical shallows, with soft melodic passages, before picking up the pace and again throwing caution to the winds.Over 15 years and six albums, experimental three-piece, Russian Circles have had a similar approach to instrumental music as post-rockers Mogwai, but one less cinematic in tone. For their latest opus, however, Mike Sullivan, Dave Turncrantz and Brian Cook have turned up the volume to 11 in the places where it counts. Despite Read more ...
joe.muggs
You can see why of all jazz acts, the indie-centric Domino label went for this one. In particular if you took the drums and guitar of Lizy Exell and Shirley Tetteh alone, at various points here you could be listening to post-rock, with hints of Sigur Rós or God Speed You! Black Emperor especially on the album's epic centrepiece “EU (Emotionally Unavailable)”.The production, too – from Kwes (Solange, Damon Albarn, Micachu) – is as hefty and sometimes experimental as you'd expect from a left of centre rock or electronica act. But crucially, these parts are just aspects of a larger whole. Once Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Music can rile in a way that other artistic forms tend not to. It’s perfectly possible for people to take a dislike to someone they’ve never met based on no more than a Spotify playlist. Take any successful band and you’re guaranteed to find people who despise them for the heinous crime of making pop music that they don’t much care for. Kaiser Chiefs are one such band and the ire they draw from some quarters intensified after frontman Ricky Wilson’s tenure on TV talent show The Voice. All of a sudden indie credibility – whatever that is – was out of the window and he was Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As this month’s edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl appears the sun is blazing outside, a heatwave hits, and our record collections must hide in the shadows or warp. Yet still we want more to join them in their sheltered rows and where better to seek the greatest new releases than the longest, most complete monthly round-up of new vinyl releases. As ever, we run the gamut. This time there’s everything from grunge to soul to trap to Qawwali and a whole lot more most of us never imagined could exist. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHQasim Naqvi Teenages (Erased Tapes)Teenages, latest album from New York Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Friday 19 July2019 is a big deal in the Supersonic universe, as it marks the fifteenth time that the Festival has been held in Birmingham – the Home of Metal. So, what better way to celebrate than to kick things off with a double header at the City’s iconic Town Hall venue and what better bands to do the honours than local lads, Godflesh and US noise veterans, Neurosis?Despite being July, Birmingham was distinctly soggy as fans queued to get into Town Hall, and not one for acting like a star, Godflesh’s Justin Broadrick hit the stage in an anorak and rucksack with sodden hair. Initially, the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Violent Femmes might be one of America’s most distinctive-sounding bands. There’s no mistaking the combination of Gordon Gano’s laconic, speak-sung vocals and Brian Ritchie’s bass that has been at the heart of the band since the early 80s. On Hotel Last Resort, the band’s 10th album (and second since their 2013 comeback), they play with many sounds: comic slacker rock, blunted bossa nova, high-profile guest spot showcase, deadbeat lullaby, demented barbershop. But there’s no point at which it doesn’t sound like the Violent Femmes.The album finds the band - now a four-piece following the Read more ...