New music
Classic Albums: Amy Winehouse - Back to Black, BBC Four review - suffering turned into songSaturday, 15 September 2018
Formats are second nature to TV: the BBC and Eagle Rock’s Classic Albums will run and run. Like all formats, there’s always the risk that the medium becomes the message, and content suffers under the weight of form. But Classic Albums at least... Read more... |
theartsdesk Radio Show 22 - the autumn's newest global soundsSaturday, 15 September 2018
The latest in Peter Culshaw’s occasional updates in the best of new global music features unreleased tracks from forthcoming autumn releases and re-releases dug up by eccentric crate-diggers. Even more lunatically eclectic than usual we have some... Read more... |
CD: Hawkwind - Road to UtopiaSaturday, 15 September 2018
Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt... Read more... |
Arctic Monkeys, O2 review - musicanship and showmanship successfully collideFriday, 14 September 2018
So here we are. Over a decade since we all fell in love. So many light years from the rubble to the Ritz. From Sheffield to LA, where half the band is now based. And by the looks of the audience, a fair proportion has been along for the whole ride.... Read more... |
'I read French from left to right and Arabic from right to left': remembering Algerian rebel rocker Rachid TahaFriday, 14 September 2018
Rachid Taha, rockeur and provocateur, died this week of a heart attack. He was one of the last of the rebel rockers, a devotee of both The Clash and Oum Khalsoum. He brought rock and Algerian music together in a fabulously... Read more... |
CD: Paul Weller – True MeaningsThursday, 13 September 2018
2017 was a year in which Paul Weller reminded us all why he’s a force to be reckoned with. An impressive foray into the world of soundtracks (the score to Johnny Harris’s Jawbone) was followed by A Kind Revolution, which was, for the most part, a... Read more... |
CD: Loudon Wainwright III - Years in the MakingWednesday, 12 September 2018
For nearly half a century, Loudon Wainwright III has trodden a path on the margins of American popular music. He is as much a wry and sometimes puerile humourist as he is the writer of touching songs about love. This new collection of unreleased... Read more... |
The The, Digbeth Arena, Birmingham review - Matt Johnson takes his political pop back on the roadMonday, 10 September 2018
Matt Johnson is a genial bloke with a trunk-load of songs that view the glass as not only half empty but too small. In the '80s and early '90s this pessimistic protest singer even managed to bother the charts a fair few times before quietly slipping... Read more... |
CD: Richard Thompson - 13 RiversMonday, 10 September 2018
Rivers carry our effluents away; they water the land, burst their banks, serve as borders, and as freight routes; their names are older than the towns built around them. They carry spirits and take lives, bring fecundity, and carry themselves... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cologne: urban boutique on the RhineSunday, 09 September 2018
The terrace beside the restaurant in Cologne’s Stadtgarten – the city park – is heaving. Agreeably so. A bar and a food counter facing onto it are fringed by rows of long tables. Overhanging trees unite in a canopy suggesting this might be forest... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Stella ChiwesheSunday, 09 September 2018
Until now, hearing the extraordinary “Ratidzo” was all-but impossible. The original single is rare and has not been reissued before. It begins with a plaintive whistle which sets the scene for a hypnotic and beautiful rotating pattern of single... Read more... |
CD: Willie Nelson - My WaySaturday, 08 September 2018
Of all the great country superstars of his era, Willie Nelson is truly the last man standing (as was made clear by the title of his last album… Last Man Standing). In his mid-80s his output has, if anything, become more prolific. However, if his... Read more... |
