New music
Liz Thomson
Among the many things that make the folk community such a warm and welcoming “family” is that you know which side you’re all on, to paraphrase the title of the song written by Florence Reece, wife of a United Mineworkers official during the bitter struggle known as “the Harlan County War”, almost a century ago. Collected by Pete Seeger and sung by the Almanac Singers, it is kept alive by Billy Bragg any many others.I doubt it’s in the repertoire of Le Vent du Nord though there’s surely a French-Canadian equivalent, but the same feeling of camaraderie and solidarity prevailed at Cecil Sharp Read more ...
Liz Thomson
A father and son union – the first joint collaboration by Garfunkel père et fils. Art Junior it seems has already released two solo albums, Wie Du and Evergreen, Simon & Garfunkel covers, both of which charted in Germany, from where the Garfunkel antecedents hail.Father and Son celebrates “a unique connection” (obviously) and is “an expression of our bond”. Certainly, their voices have a good deal in common though Junior’s is less pure than Senior’s in its best-selling Simon & Garfunkel heyday. Though Art Senior suffered vocal cord paresis in 2010, the result of choking on a chunk of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Tucker Zimmerman is singing a number called “Don’t Go Crazy (Go in Peace)”. At 83, he performs sitting down. Surrounded by support band Iji, who act as his pick-up, he approaches the song in a whispery, affable voice. At the start of his set he was assisted to his seat but, knees aside, he’s not frail. He’s just laid back, a Sixties original, strumming gently. “Don’t go crazy,” he sings, “Go with the flow, go in peace.” Although he’s advised us to not think about politics, it’s hard not to. Yet his hour-long show soothes, offers a window into some of what’s best about America.Tucker is one of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In many ways, Primal Scream have had a strikingly similar career path to the Rolling Stones – despite them forming some 20 years after Mick and Keith’s odyssey began and it not throwing up quite the same level of financial rewards. That said, while drugs and death may have haunted both bands, they never seemed to sap Primal Scream’s creatively in quite the same way as it did the Stones.Nevertheless, both outfits are generally recognised to have knocked out a string of quite spectacular albums some fair few years into their careers – in the Scream’s case, spanning the 1990s from Screamadelica Read more ...
joe.muggs
If the names Pinch, Vex’d, Burial, Digital Mystikz, The Bug mean anything to you, stop reading now and buy or stream this album. Seriously, go. Go get it. That honestly is all you need to know: if you like the imperial phase when British dubstep was first establishing lasting artistic careers and extending its tendrils into the wider musical world – completely separately from its branching into a fizzy, EDM / rave form in big arenas – then you will love this record.Which is not to say it’s a throwback. Alicia Bauer aka Alley Cat has been in the bass music realm for a long time – starting in Read more ...
Guy Oddy
More than once during their barnstorming performance this weekend, Bobby Vylan, vocalist with Bob Vylan proclaimed from the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Institute that “We are the cutest band in punk rock. The friendliest band in rock’n’roll. The most important band in Great Britain”. He might just have been right.Bobby and his drumming buddy, Bobbie Vylan (in a world of celebrity-botherers Bobby and Bobbie like to keep things anonymous) certainly have the songs; they’ve definitely built up a rapport with their fans and stay long after the house lights come up to chat, sign merchandise and have Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Springs begins cooking with “Spaced Out Invaders - Part I Quirks,” its fourth track. A spindly, rotating guitar figure interweaves with clattering percussion and pulsating electric bass. Around three minutes in, a sax – which, until this point, has kept in the background – begins whipping up a maelstrom. Overall, the effect conjured is that of a space rock-inclined exotica, Martin Denny had he been an early Seventies freak.Elsewhere, Springs turns corners into pure kosmiche-adjacent spaciness (“Spaced Out Invaders - Part II Vessels”), Canterbury scene jazz rock were it informed by a Gang Of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After the chart success of his second album, June 1969’s Hot Buttered Soul, it was inevitable that any single had to represent Isaac Hayes in a different way to the LP. The album’s 12-minute version of “Walk on by” would not work as a seven-incher. There was also “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” which clocked in at over 18 minutes. They did, though, become the A- and B-sides of a tie-in single. But only after significant editing.The decision to truncate album tracks for the singles market set a pattern. Follow-up album The Isaac Hayes Movement opened with a just-short of 12-minute cover of “I Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Chuck Prophet speaks the old language of rock’n’roll as if it’s bright and new. His long gone band Green On Red were R.E.M.’s Eighties peers, and as rock’s cultural tide has receded, his loyalty to its spirit of liberty, askance at authority and place with those clinging to or embracing the bottom rung has become a natural act of faith.Wake the Dead is Prophet’s first album since his recovery from cancer, and splices his Mission Express band with ¿Qiensave?, Californian practitioners of cumbia, the Columbian sound which proved his musical light in dark times. He’s sought fresh inflections and Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Well, seems like only yesterday when I reviewed Willie Nelson’s last album, Borderline, an excellent set from the man’s ninth decade, and now here comes Last Leaf on the Tree, a consummate set that’s at a higher level.It opens with Tom Waits’ title song, with producer and multi-instrumentalist Micah Nelson, Willie’s son, ensuring that Trigger, Nelson’s much-travelled guitar, gets plenty of room to roam. The sound palette is spare, with the limpid clarity of 1990s peaks Spirit or Teatro, and as they are among Nelson’s great albums, that means a lot. It was largely recorded together in a room, Read more ...
joe.muggs
Could melancholia be an elixir of creative youth? Or is it that sad people were never really that youthful, so age suits them? Certainly it seems that there was something in the water for so many of the foundational 80s indie bands who dealt in sadness, pain and existential angst that makes longevity suit them: The Jesus & Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr., Throwing Muses, Ride, Slowdive just for starters have all somehow ambled into the 2020s on the creative form of their lives. And now the daddies of them all, The Cure, have clearly cottoned on and joined the forlorn party, because this album – Read more ...
Guy Oddy
That Peter Perrett is still alive after the decades of bad habits that he inflicted on himself must be something of a surprise to those who’ve followed his career since the mid-70s. First there was England’s Glory, then the truly exquisite Only Ones and more recently an intermittent solo career – all of which have produced searing anthems from society’s seedy underbelly.At the ripe old age of 72, Perrett must surely be a poster boy for lovable scoundrels in their third acts and that he’s still turning out records of The Cleansing’s guilt-edged quality is nothing less than miraculous, Read more ...