New music
mark.kidel
Rod Stewart continues to hit the spot: he never fails to deliver well-crafted music that draws from the wide range of styles that he clearly loves. Apart from being a megastar and a lovable performer, he has always been a musician with a great deal of taste – as was clear at the very start with his two remarkable solo albums, An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down (1969) and Gasoline Alley (1970).His latest is true to form, and ranges from smooth and danceable Philly Sound-inspired tracks such as “Give Me Love” to the gutsy country blues of “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”, originally a hit with black Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 2016, a writer from The Washington Post thought they had found Bobbie Gentry. After announcing their presence via the entry phone system of a gated housing development near Greenwood, Mississippi, they were told “there's nobody here by that name.” Though Greenwood was where Gentry had attended school and taught herself to play multiple instruments, it was a predictable response. She has been called “the JD Salinger of rock ’n’ roll.” Jill Sobule recorded the song “Where is Bobbie Gentry?” in 2009, the year BBC radio broadcast the documentary Whatever Happened to Bobbie Gentry?The snippets Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Chas Hodges has died at the age of 74, bringing to an end a career that reaches back to the very beginnings of British pop music. He was best known as one half of Chas and Dave. The duo he formed with Dave Peacock were the poster boys of rockney, a chirpy fusion of three-chord rock'n'roll and rollicking Cockney wit.They weren’t quite bona fide Cockneys: Chas hails from Edmonton and Dave from Ponders End. But they were genuine rock'n'rollers who served a long apprenticeship in the Sixties. Hodges in particular was a session guitarist for the pioneering producer Joe Meek, and crops up as a Read more ...
joe.muggs
It may be mean to say, but it seems sadness agrees with Tim Hecker. The Canadian has been a mainstay of the global experimental music world almost since the turn of the millennium, sitting somewhere between neo-classical, shoegaze, ambient and abstract noise. His tracks are always delicate, always poised, sometimes veering a little into harsh distortion though rarely if ever enough to scare the horses; and they seem to be at their best when they're at their sparsest and most desolate.There's certainly plenty of sparseness and desolation in his ninth album, a series of collaborations with Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Mudhoney are a constant in a changing world. When they first burst into our consciousness 30 years ago, few would have put their mortgage on the band’s longevity. They were an urgent burst of punk-fuelled grunge: sprawling, exciting and comfortably dumb.They were the grunge blueprint and, in part, the reason for their staying power may well be the fact that they’ve never stayed too far from it. Digital Garbage is no exception, showing Mudhoney to be a band as comfortable in their sound as they are uncomfortable in the world around them. This discomfort is highlighted throughout and Read more ...
joe.muggs
Knowing a deceased artist's archives are available for re-release is a double-edged sword. Will there be a shoddy flood of any and every old bit of tat a la Jimi Hendrix? Will there be half-arsed, half-finished and even fake songs bodged together by trashy but popular modern dance remixers like Michael Jackson? Will the vaults just stay infuriatingly locked? With the impossibly prolific, but often self-indulgent Prince, it is doubly worrying: who has the rights? What will the quality control filter be like?Well, thank all that is holy, on the evidence of this release they're taking the right Read more ...
Ellie Porter
“This, quite possibly, could be a really good night,” declared David Crosby. He’s a couple of songs into this show, one of only two UK dates on the tour promoting his current album Sky Trails. Looking trim, beaming and in impeccable voice, the 77-year-old known as Croz fulfils his prophecy – and then some.It’s a predictably mature crowd, but there’s a Crosby-shirt-sporting young boy in front of me who, with his mum, seems as thrilled as the rest of the audience packing out Shepherd’s Bush Empire. With a massive back catalogue to plunder, Crosby presents a fine selection tonight from his Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Christine has become Chris. The singer has struck out part of her name to gain a part of her identity – a gesture that quivers around words like transgender, sexuality, androgyny, queer. Actually, singer – real name Héloïse Letissier (previously Christine And The Queens, now Chris) – is simply presenting the next chapter of her story, following on from her slightly naiver-sounding teen-focussed debut album of Chaleur Humaine.Chris’ first album was formed when, after being depressed and heart-broken in Paris she was taken in by a group of London drag-queens from Madame Jojos who helped form Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Norwegian-Danish singer Live Foyn Friis (for English-speaking readers, Live is her first name) has released six albums, and leads several different ensembles, scattered intriguingly across the divide between jazz and pop. Her voice is recognisably Nordic, with an ethereal quality that expresses yearning, in particular. In this respect she evokes the tradition of Björk; yet she also loves Billie, Ella and Frank Sinatra and is capable of a more strident, swinging, jazz-infused expression, too. Originally trained as a saxophonist, she came to singing later, and was immediately struck with the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Bananas is Malcolm Middleton’s first solo album to be built around guitar, bass, drums and all that stuff since 2009’s gorgeous Waxing Gibbous. Like any great artist, he soon became bored with pursuing the classic formulation that made his name (post-Arab Strap). He’s spent the last few years trying new ideas instead. His last album, Summer of ’13, was his take on electropop, there’s his Human Don’t Be Angry experimental albums and a collaboration with the artist David Shrigley. On Bananas, however, those who’ve been pining for his classic sound are rewarded.Middleton is a wordsmith, striking Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
During their original 1980 to 1984 lifespan as a recording unit, Soft Cell issued three albums, a mini-album, eleven singles and EP. There were also compilation appearances, bonus tracks on discs included with albums or singles (such as the 12-inch of Jimi Hendrix cover versions accompanying The Art of Falling Apart) and extended tracks which appeared on 12-inch singles. Everything could probably be collected on six CDs.The new box set Keychains & Snowstorms: The Soft Cell Story features 10 discs, one of which is a DVD. The albums and the Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing mini-album are not Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although he’s regularly performed it live, hearing the studio version of Glen Matlock’s take on Scott Walker’s “Montague Terrace (in Blue)” is a jolt. Back in September 1967, when Matlock was 11 years old, the song was first heard on Walker’s debut solo album. Now, this elegy to a pair of cocooned lovers appears on Matlock’s solo album Good To Go as a straight yet rock-infused reconfiguration. It’s impossible not to wonder whether Matlock had Richard Hawley in mind when he set out to capture his own interpretation on tape.Glen Matlock will always be defined by his less-than two-year tenure in Read more ...