New music
Thomas H. Green
P!nk is a likably gobby superstar who has consistently maintained her position at the top of the pop tree for an impressive 17 years. Amping up her feisty one-of-the-boys persona, she’s been a template for a generation of girl-pop stars who followed. Her live shows are eye-wowing circus events, setting the bar high for stadium gigs of any type.Unfortunately, though, her seventh album is a fizzle, rather than a firework. In a year when both Katy Perry and Kesha have put out albums containing a decent share of gems – not to mention the extraordinary Lemonade from Beyoncé last year – Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Before they even step on stage The Pretenders win me to their side. An announcement prior to their appearance tells the audience, “The Pretenders request you keep your phone in your pocket.” Brilliantly, these aren’t idle words. As the gig progresses security quietly but firmly approach anyone with their phone out and asks them to desist. A few songs into the set, Chrissie Hynde has just begun a stripped-down take on her 1986 hit “Hymn to Her”, accompanied only by Welsh keyboard-player Carwyn Ellis, when she stops short. “Would everyone rather watch you take pictures than me sing?” she asks Read more ...
peter.quinn
Held auspiciously on the hundredth birthday of one of the giants of the music, composer and pianist Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982), the winners of this year's Parliamentary Jazz Awards were announced at a congenial ceremony at London’s newest live venue, PizzaExpress Live Holborn.MC’d by PizzaExpress’s debonair Music Manager, Ross Dines, this thirteenth edition of the annual awards – organised by the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group (APPJAG) – was the first to take place outside its spiritual home, the Houses of Parliament. Fuelled by pizza and Peroni (sponsors of the Read more ...
mark.kidel
Robert Plant once again ploughs the vibrant field he cultivated on his last album Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar. The mix of Led Zeppelin-rooted hard rock, softly passionate English folk with Arab rhythm and blues works wonders. Plant has, perhaps more than any other British musician, served the sacred roots of rock’n’roll. From the opening “May Queen”, which references age-old Celtic rituals, driven along crazily by the snare-buzz of the North African bendir, until the quiet and meditative closing track, “Heaven Sent”, Plant, as before accompanied by the Sensational Space Shifters Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Colors, the follow-up to Beck's meditative masterpiece Morning Phase, couldn't come as more of a contrast. It's a glossy, high-energy LP designed to make you dance, not think. The inspiration came partly from Pharrell Williams's mega-hit "Happy". When Beck heard it, in 2013, he was blown away by how exuberant it sounded. It made him wonder if he could write something with the same feel-good factor.For four long years, Beck has been working on the formula. The result is not merely a cheery album, it's a studiously cheery album, full of choppy guitars, smooth synths and complex drums. All Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Some will rob you with a six-gunAnd some with a fountain pen.…I was around 12 years old when I first heard those lines, from “Pretty Boy Floyd”, written by Woody Guthrie and sung by Joan Baez on a live album recorded on her 1962 tour of America’s black campuses. I couldn’t fathom what they meant – how could you be robbed with a fountain pen?I was in the early stages of my obsession with what I would come to understand as “the New York folk revival”, an obsession that has, in ways large and small, shaped my life though the revival was by then already long over. I’m not sure when I figured out Read more ...
Jasper Rees
One New Year’s Eve in the 1970s, hot young session musicians Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were assured by Grace Jones that they could penetrate the inner sanctum of Studio 54 by dropping her name at the door. A doorman thought otherwise and invited them to "fuck off". Making alternative arrangements, they bought a couple of bottles of Dom Perignon – “rock’n’roll mouthwash”, in Rodgers’ phrase – and went home to jam.The doorman’s valediction kept running through their heads and came out in a rhythmic disco riff. “Fuck off. Fuck Studio 54.” The tune was more radio-friendly than the verbatim Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Anyone who finds Eric Clapton and The Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb stepping up to offer their services as their producer is obviously special. It’s a view reinforced by knowing Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham and Small Faces were already their champions. Only one person fits this unique bill.PP Arnold has had no lack of starry support yet her passage through the music business has been disjointed. The release of The Turning Tide adds to what was known and also plugs gaps. The 13-cut album collects tracks she made with Clapton, Gibb and Elton John associate Caleb Quaye. All but two are Read more ...
howard.male
It’s easier to admire than fall in love with the music of St Vincent aka Annie Clark. But then again does one genuinely fall in love with a Bacon painting or a Beckett play? It’s just that we’re more used to taking pop songs to our heart, fondly looking back on them as markers of key moments on our lives. Having said that, some love struck couple might semi-ironically play Massduction’s lead single “New York” at their wedding. It’s resigned hook line, ‘You’re the only motherfucker in the city who can stand me,’ is delivered with such melancholy gratitude that it does evoke an emotional Read more ...
peter.quinn
With their contrasting yet entirely complementary timbres and their ability to create textural palettes ranging from lonesome single notes to fulsome chords rich with harmonics, the combination of pipes and fiddle is surely one of the most potent in traditional Irish music.That was certainly the case at this remarkable concert celebrating the work of the 19th century music collector, Canon James Goodman (1828-1896). A Protestant minister, Irish speaker and uilleann piper from Dingle, Co. Kerry, and later a Professor of Irish at Trinity College Dublin, Goodman’s passion for music saw him amass Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
High hopes are riding on Dua Lipa. Tonight is the first date of her Self-Titled Tour, but it ends next April. In between, it will travel all over the world, culminating in a series of British stadium dates, the last one at the Alexandra Palace. Such confidence is born of a string of hits across Europe, culminating in this summer’s UK chart-topper, “New Rules”. When she kicks off her show at the Brighton Dome, the near-capacity audience is buzzing, and sing along to one of her bigger successes, “Hotter Than Hell”. This crowd really are onside. They’ve been chanting her name, on and off, for Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Courtney Barnett’s debut album, Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, was a quirky and bitter-sweet disc of sunny lo-fi tunes about wanting to be an evaluator operator, the price of organic vegetables and generally being at a bit of a loose end. Well, that was a couple of years ago and for her follow-up, she’s taken the somewhat unexpected step of getting together with lo-fi king, Kurt Vile for an album of largely laidback, Americana-infused duets that take a lead from Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris’ 70s hippy cowboy ballads and 90s slacker couple Evan Dando and Julia Hatfield Read more ...