New music
Kieron Tyler
Between them, Marylebone Beat Girls and Milk of the Tree cover the years 1964 to 1973. Each collects tracks recorded by female singers: whether credited as solo acts, fronting a band or singer-songwriters performing self-penned material. That the two compilations dovetail is coincidental – they were released by different labels on the same day – but they embrace the period when the singer-songwriter was codified and when, as the liner notes of Milk of the Tree put it, “female voices began to be widely heard in the [music] industry.”As that quote suggests, Milk of the Tree: An Anthology Of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Think of Randy Newman and the image conjured up may be of a lugubrious piano man with a sardonic streak. Or perhaps the composer responsible for countless Pixar soundtracks. But there is more to the bespectacled songsmith than just his witty songs and orchestral themes. There are also his theatrical flourishes. And Dark Matter, Newman's first singer-songwriter LP in a while, starts in just such a cabaret mood"The Great Debate" takes the form of a discussion, weighing up the pros and cons of science and religion in an eight-minute epic complete with gospel choirs and spoken-words. Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This year’s Førdefestivalen was gabled by an opening Nordic Sound Folk Orchestra showcase and a spectacular closing gala, live-streamed and broadcast Europe-wide. It featured a dizzyingly eclectic range of world and Nordic folk bands, as well as the speediest stage turn-arounds I’ve ever seen.Førdefestivalen is a unique musical gathering in a small Norwegian town on Norway’s west coast, deep in fjord country, the landscape painter Nikolai Astrup’s habitat. Skydiving from the nearby Hafstadfjellet mountain (alas, sometimes fatally) is a popular pastime. Jumpers launch themselves from the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s a rather shocking 20 years since the somewhat unfairly maligned second Black Grape album Stupid Stupid Stupid was released, after which the band went into freefall before imploding. To celebrate this anniversary, or more likely because it might raise them a few quid, Shaun Ryder and Kermit have left the rest of the band out in the cold and wandered into the studio with über-producer Youth for an album that, while it doesn’t hit the heights of the best of Black Grape’s output from the ‘90s, is considerably better than might be expected.Laidback, sunny and funky tunes marinated in a fug of Read more ...
joe.muggs
The orchestral-electronic sounds which the Erased Tapes label epitomises exist balanced on a knife-edge of extreme tastefulness. Not quite fitting into either the classical or the club-electronica worlds, the style is closest to film composition – indeed artists like Jóhann Jóhannsson are increasingly bringing the sound right to the heart of the Hollywood establishment – and can be extremely popular: Erased Tapes's Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds are big names, easily filling big halls worldwide. But it's still viewed with some wariness by those self-conscious about their tastes: to some it all Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In media coverage of Woodstock, Santana always seems to be overshadowed by the oft-mentioned cultural significance of Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner”. However, go check their performances, side by side, for pure visceral thrills, and it’s Santana’s amped Latin explosion that comes up trumps. If he hadn’t spent the better part of the Seventies and Eighties turning out tedious jazz-fusion (as Hendrix might well have done, had he lived), Santana would be on many more 21st century posters and T-shirts.1999’s collaborative Supernatural album famously rehabilitated him as a commercial entity and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ten years ago Brighton band 12 Stone Toddler burst onto the scene with two off-the-wall albums of madly inventive pop-rock. They then vamoosed back out of existence. Now they’re back, preparing a third album for the Freshly Squeezed label, and playing a packed home town gig. The second song they do is a new one, “Piranha” and it shows they’re no nearer normal. It’s a jagged, shouty thing with a catchy chorus about there being piranhas in the water, half football chant, half King Crimson. It’s edgy, deliberately bizarre, and oddly approachable, fun by way of musical obtuseness, just like the Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Mark E Smith’s wit and the ever-changing, ever-suffering line-up behind him have established The Fall as one of the most seminal post-punk bands in Britain. From their classic 1976 debut Live at the Witch Trials to 2015’s acclaimed Sub-Lingual Tablet, they’ve regularly churned out record after record of blisteringly off-kilter and innovative jams and in true Fall fashion, New Facts Emerge both continues and contradicts this legacy.Following 30 seconds of incoherent slurring, “Fol De Rol” bursts in sounding vaguely reminiscent of Thee Oh Sees’ latest albums, with its glinting guitar lines, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Production gloss and deliberation are not notions immediately springing to mind while pondering the 1976-era Ramones. Even so, this new edition of their second album, the ever-wonderful Leave Home, reveals that careful consideration was given to how they presented themselves on record.Leave Home demonstrated the Ramones more-than had the goods to build on the promise of their era-defining debut, and little needs saying about the album itself. It steps beyond punk and is a rock classic. The meat of this new reissue is unfamiliar though: fifteen never-before-heard in-progress tracks – the whole Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lana Del Rey is hard to suss. Her cinematic plasticity is part of her appeal, yet it’s also what makes her difficult to love. One thing she cannot be accused of is laziness. For a star of her stature, she’s fairly pumping out music, with this sixteen-tracker her fourth album since her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die. Del Rey’s patented style is opiated mournfulness, a kitsch, Californian, 21st Century spin on what Portishead were doing 20 years ago. This is no bad thing. She’s a more interesting proposition than many of her peers.Lana Del Rey’s way with words is unique. Even when it’s unclear Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The cover of Alice Cooper’s first album in six years shows the erstwhile Vincent Furnier with two heads. This, one assumes, is supposed to provide a neat little illustration of Paranormal’s musical content which is spread over two discs. On the first disc, Alice lays out his theatrical vision over largely alt-rock stylings, while on the second disc he knocks out a couple of tunes with the iconic Alice Cooper Band before treating the listener to half a dozen of his old classics culled from a recent gig in Columbus with his present band.It’s all good fun and there are even a few decent tunes Read more ...
howard.male
If you consider the fanciful notion that Arcade Fire are a kind of Canadian art house Dexys Midnight Runners who have substituted strained angsty soul for strained angsty rock, then the title track of their new album is their “Come On Eileen”. It’s got that same striving for some kind of transcendence beyond the boundaries of what is, after all, just pop music. Opening with a shiny, bright Abba-esque piano melody, “Everything Now” has summer anthem written all over it – sort of. Sort of, because if this rosy apple of an epic wasn’t metaphorical, on turning it over you’d find it seething with Read more ...