New music
Kieron Tyler
Although the reformed Undertones, with Paul McLoone replacing original singer Feargal Sharkey, have been a popular live draw since 1999, John Peel’s anointing of “Teenage Kicks” from their debut EP as his favourite recording suggests this is what they were about: a single, timeless song.Of course, it was not. The singles or lead EP tracks which followed – “Get Over You”, “Jimmy Jimmy”, “Here Comes Summer” and “You’ve Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It)” – were as wonderful. So were their first two albums. The recent publication of the engaging Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone, bassist Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's an eeriness about this record that comes of it being so very perfectly anachronistic. TOY have formerly mined various parts of experimental rock history, notably Krautrock, and on their collaboration with Natasha “Bat For Lashes” Khan, some wild psychedelic rock from all corners of the planet. And certainly you can hear the chug of 1970s Dusseldorf sublimated into the grooves here on their third album – but the overwhelming sense is that this record exists somewhere around 1988 or 1989, back when indie truly meant indie.Yes, that does mean there's a feyness and reticence to the Read more ...
Tim Cumming
It was first released on 23 November 1979, comprising three 45rpm, 12in records housed in 16mm metal film cans, and then reissued the following February as Second Edition, in the more friendly and familiar format of a double album, 33rpm, gatefold sleeve, lyrics on the back, no song titles, with just the PIL logo on the record label. The previous July, "Death Disco" had entered the Top 20 at No 20 for two amazing weeks and Metal Box itself – in film canister format – would stay in the charts through to December 1979, reaching No 18. These numbers are important because, both before then and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Loudon Wainwright III, a going concern as a singer-songwriter since the start of the Seventies, has long since been occluded by the commercial success of his brood, Martha and Rufus. Their old man is still enough of a draw to pack out the Palladium with just a guitar, a banjo and a back catalogue of cranky songs only he could have composed.For subject matter Wainwright has tended to commute, he cheerfully conceded, along a well-trodden path between “shitty relationships” and “death and decay”. There was a bit of both here – a compulsory outing for “Unhappy Anniversary” and his medical comedy Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Where’s the beef? In exchanging the raw meat couture Lady Gaga wore to the 2010 MTV Awards for the leathery country sounds of her latest, fifth album, fans will be wondering if she’s lost her cutting edge. For a New Yorker of Italian descent, a country-tinged album is not a return to anything, but a strategic choice, and these are not rootsy songs, but sometimes rather rootless ones. There are many successful recent templates for young female singers who want to express their inner hoedown. The trouble for Gaga is that she has usually been the one creating the templates for others to attempt Read more ...
Marcus Davey
We've got a lot to celebrate in 2016: 50 years since the Roundhouse became an arts centre and 10 years of transforming young lives through creativity. In celebration of this momentous year we embarked on a journey of discovery to uncover the stories from train-enthusiast accounts of our humble beginnings to real-life high-wire love stories, from week-long raves in the 1990s to politically-charged spoken word in the 2000s. So many incredible stories have emerged from the walls of this beautiful building.In the 1960s freedom of expression and liberation had arrived in London. Skirts were Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Jon Bon Jovi may be many things – a rock star, heartthrob and possessor of a fine haircut, to name but a few. The jury's still out, however, on whether he's actually a great singer. The consensus is more that Bon Jovi's voice is a character instrument and one that works best with Richie Sambora's guitar. Little wonder then, that when the guitarist left in 2014, the band struggled to recapture their old magic. Still, two years have now elapsed, since when many sonic adjustments have been made. So have they now regained their old mojo?This House Is Not for Sale certainly starts well enough Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Fans of the Birkenhead post-punk humorists are a patient crowd. It’s been two years since the last album (they haven’t been more frequent since the 1990s) and now followers are rewarded not with new music, but, as the title allusively suggests, a collection of B-sides and EPs that are in some cases hard to find elsewhere. Stony ground indeed.There are some gems here. “Vatican Broadside” – all 30 seconds of it – is still genuinely funny, as is “Hair Like Brian May Blues”. Both songs combine verbal and musical humour in a way few musicians manage. The best of these pieces start with humour, but Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The period between the October 1966 release of his eponymous debut album and its follow-up, August 1967’s baroque masterpiece Goodbye and Hello, saw Tim Buckley and his label Elektra reconsider how best to help him generate an impact. No matter how strong its songs and how unique his voice, the folk-rock styled Tim Buckley hadn’t been a big seller. Label boss Jac Holzman thought a non-album single would be good marketing tool, paving the way for a second album. One side of the shelved release surfaced in 2009 on the Where The Action Is! – Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968 box set. Otherwise, no Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After the success of 2014’s Aquostic, which saw the band shift nearly half a million albums, Status Quo are back with more of the same to see whether they can repeat the trick.The big lie about the Quo is that their entire career has been based on this very premise: turf out a load of three-chord, feelgood, 12-bar boogie blues; tour; repeat to fade. In fact, there’s rather more to them than that, and I don’t mean the reedy psych of “Matchstick Men” either. Transitional, early Seventies LPs Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon and Dog of Two Head, document a band who could write and play groove-led blues Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Agnes Obel’s new album Citizen of Glass is released next week. Conceptually underpinned by a fascination with the German idea of the gläserner menschen or gläserner bürger – the glass citizen – its ten compositions examine privacy, the nature of what is hidden, why it is concealed and question how much self-exposure is needed, whether in day-to-day life or as fuel for an artist. The glass citizen is one for whom everything is apparent.Discussing the album, the Berlin-based Danish singer-songwriter (born 1980) revealed its conception and inspirations, and also explained the ideas behind many Read more ...
joe.muggs
A legacy can be a hell of a thing. When someone has a recorded archive of stone cold classics, it must be very tough indeed to present their new works, knowing they'll be compared to their best. This goes double with a voice as distinctive as Chrissie Hynde's: even the smallest inflexions of her singing are so recognisable that they instantly trigger sense memories of all the times that her songs have struck an emotional chord in the listener.Make no mistake, Alone is a very good album. From the second the title track kicks in, feeling like a strangely rowdy Velvet Underground deciding it's Read more ...