New music
Kieron Tyler
Adam Ant was one of the few who saw Sex Pistols’ first live show. On 6 November 1975, his band Bazooka Joe was playing Charing Cross Road’s St Martin’s School of Art. They found an uninvited support band had gatecrashed the evening. The impact of the interlopers on the then Stuart Goddard wasn’t instant, but he would go on to form The B-Sides and, then, Adam and the Ants, whose manager became Jordan, who worked at Malcolm McLaren’s King’s Road shop SEX. Adam was hotwired into what became codified as punk rock. But his music was never defined by templates.Mainstream impact took a while to come Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There are many ways to push musical boundaries. Some artists, from Albert Ayler to Can to Sunn O))) and far beyond, do it sonically. Xylaroo are not a band in this vein. Consisting of east London-based sisters Holly and Coco Chant, their music dramatically sparks listeners’ sensibilities through other means.On one level their strummed pop could be dismissed as something a friend might come up with, off the cuff, around the campfire. But only if that friend happened to be Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell or similar. Xylaroo push the boundaries, alright, but using a combination of glistening, Read more ...
Dylan Moore
“Are you enjoying Wales, John?” shouts a fan, eventually. Our returning hero has remained taciturn and all but static at his keyboard throughout an epic show that spans one of popular music’s most interesting and influential careers. Cale affects to have misheard. “Am I rejoining Wales?” he ponders. “I certainly hope so. I feel like I’m rejoining every time I’m here.”Singer-songwriter, composer, record producer and (of course) founding member of the Velvet Underground, John Cale is an inspired choice to open Cardiff’s new Festival of Voice, a biennial attempt to catapult the Welsh capital Read more ...
Barney Harsent
I looked around at the grime-flecked warehouse and surveyed the brick parquet floor. Even the dappled sunlight and birdsong couldn’t soften the realisation – or the ground, for that matter. “We’re going to struggle to get a tent peg in this,” I said to our travelling companions. Then, taking command of the situation, I boldly stated what we were all thinking: “I don’t think this is a campsite. I think this is a Jewsons.”We were on our way to Colebrook Lakes, the site of the Alfresco Festival, a brand-new, family-friendly affair in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Apparently home to the Read more ...
joe.muggs
This record passes the Rainy Day Greasy Spoon Test with flying colours. It's a vital one for any music that tends to the middle of the road: picture yourself in a cafe, mid-morning, mid-week, perhaps with a hangover, perhaps trying to avoid thinking about a personal problem, certainly not feeling excellent, staring at a mug of tea and the remains of an egg sandwich, with everything outside the windows damp and grey. How do you feel as the music comes onto the radio?This is not about suspending critical faculties, and it's certainly not about snobbery: it's about understanding the Read more ...
howard.male
When producer Guilherme Kastrup asked this 78-year-old Brazilian icon what she wanted this album to be about she replied, “Sex and blackness.” Listening to the end result makes one wonder if she was referring to blackness as the colour of her skin or the colour of her mood. Perhaps a bit of both, because Soares’s 34th studio album is a corrosive cocktail of rock, jazz, funk and samba that at times becomes almost unlistenably intense. I say "almost" because if you steel yourself sufficiently, it’s an unpredictable and bracing sequence of songs that makes more formal and emotional sense with Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It may be half a decade since The Kills graced us with their Blood Pressures album and its more produced take on their original grubby punk blues sound. The wait for something new has been largely due to Jamie Hince undergoing several operations on his hand, and consequently having to relearn how to play his guitar, rather than to any great sonic re-evaluation and revamping of their shtick. For, despite band claims to the contrary, not that much has changed and Ash and Ice, like its predecessor, is a not-too-glossy bluesy art-rocker that exudes angst and misery and a more than slightly Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Rob da Bank’s Faustian pact with the weather gods continues apace with the second year of Common People, which takes place simultaneously in Southampton and Oxford. The forecast for days beforehand had predicted a cold front bearing relentless drizzle but, in the event, wellies were left packed away as the elements chose instead to offer blazing summer sunshine for the 30,000 revellers who attended the festival's second day at Southampton.I went with my two daughters, aged 13 and 18, and the attention to detail, which makes da Bank’s festivals (Camp Bestival, Bestival) so appealing, is Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Just over three years ago, I was swooning for this very site over Tegan and Sara’s masterful shift from indie rock to full-bodied, floor-filling, retro-inspired electropop. But as catchy and cathartic as that album, Heartthrob, was, ultimately it only hinted at the ability of the Quin twins to write an all-consuming, gigantic pop song. Their eighth album, Love You to Death, is the one on which the longest build in the history of modern pop finally breaks: that song is called “Boyfriend”, it’s a giddy rush of gender-bending sugar-spun queer-pop, and it deserves to be absolutely massive.As, too Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Beth Orton’s sparsely ethereal new collection Kidsticks has been well received for marking an interesting change of direction. Last night’s Brighton Festival gig gave audiences the best of both, beginning with most of the new songs, then climaxing with some old favourites that evoked her rockier past.Nor was it just the blend of old and new songs that offered an intriguing perspective on her craft. Live, her voice has a grainier, more sensuous quality than on (the new) record. A case can be made for the perfect sheen of the recorded sound. The glassy lacquer was missed on the dreamy waft “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last May, Malmö trio Death and Vanilla issued the To Where the Wild Things are album and it seemed they had arrived as a fully formed post-Broadcast proposition, harmoniously fusing vintage influences like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Italian giallo soundtracks and The United States of America. With its cover imagery evoking the British Ghostbox label, To Where the Wild Things are could have been dismissed as havng thumbed a ride on a musical excursion begun by others. But the album was so assured and stuffed with such dreamy melodies it transcended the inspirations. Death and Vanilla were Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kevin Rowland, throughout his career, has been a man who doesn’t brook compromise, whatever the consequences. He seems to have mellowed slightly with age but he still appears to do precisely what he wants, however bizarre, unexpected and possibly commercially suicidal.That he has followed up the enjoyable, witty and critically acclaimed 2012 concept album One Day I’m Going To Soar, and the magnificent theatrical shows that accompanied it, with an album of Irish songs – seasoned with a side order of Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Joni Mitchell, LeAnn Rimes, and Jerome Kern – shouldn’t raise too Read more ...