wed 21/05/2025

New music

Reissue CDs Weekly: REM

Good grief, was Out of Time really 25 years ago? This was the seventh studio album from the li'l ole band from Athens, Georgia, and the one with which they finally cracked open the mainstream international market. This was when people still used to...

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Michael Wollny Trio + Andrew McCormack, Kings Place

This rambunctious German-Swiss trio is used to selling out much larger venues at home. Their overdue EFG London Jazz Festival debut, in an enthusiastic but not full Kings Place, introduced British audiences to an exhilarating take on the acoustic...

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CD: Martha Wainwright - Goodnight City

After four years, Martha Wainwright is back with her fourth solo album. While she’s been away she’s turned 40 and now says that on this outing she’s “a songwriter, but also just a singer and interpreter. This is perhaps the essence of who I truly am...

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Jazz Voice, Royal Festival Hall

Following the seismic events across the pond earlier this week, an outcome which has left the rest of the world blinking in disbelief, Guy Barker’s brilliant arrangements for this year’s Jazz Voice offered much needed balm for the soul. Creativity,...

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Billy Bragg & Joe Henry, St Georges Church, Brighton

The day after Trump won the US presidential election was always going to be an interesting day for a concert by Billy Bragg and his American cohort Joe Henry. Bragg’s 1986 song “Help Save the Youth of America” is, for instance, given added power by...

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theartsdesk Radio Show 16

After a hiatus, theartsdesk Radio Show is back with a new partner, Music Box Radio, hosted in their studio at the Market House in Brixton. Peter Culshaw’s global round-up of new and newly re-released discs jumps from Brazilian psychedelia to synth...

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CD: Sting - 57th and 9th

Even now, Sting's reputation as one of rock's most earnest men looms large. His last two projects consisted of a Broadway musical about Newcastle's ship industry and a "symphonic" retrospective of his greatest hits. Before that ...

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Leonard Cohen: Turning the Darkness Into Beauty

Leonard Cohen, who has died at 82, was one of those artists born with a wisdom and maturity that cut deep into the baby-boomer youth culture of his times. He provided the perfect antidote to the innocent optimism of the 1960s, a vision shot through...

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Psychic TV, Brixton Jamm

The last time Genesis Breyer P Orridge was in the UK, it was to touch down and talk about life, art, magic and strange encounters as part of COUM, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and PTV3 at the October Gallery's William Burroughs centenary show back...

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CD: Alicia Keys - Here

When the world seems to be so politically off-kilter, fracturing before our eyes into a typhoon of misogyny and racism, Alicia Keys is singing out with a defiant voice, with positive songs about society and, in particular, women.Keys’ music is...

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Supersonic Festival Launch Party, Centrala, Birmingham

Regular subscribers to the Arts Desk may have noticed a certain view from some of our number that the Glastonbury Festival is the annual musical and social high point of the year in the UK. On this subject, I would beg to differ and instead claim...

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CD: Honeyblood - Babes Never Die

To anybody who was able to resist the girl gang siren call that was Honeyblood’s 2014 debut album, the Glasgow duo is upping their offer. Babes Never Die is both a motto and a call to arms, the words – apparently – tattooed on the ribcage of singer/...

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