New music
Guy Oddy
Wolfmother have made something of a name for themselves over the last decade or so by grafting classic 1970s hard rock moves onto stoner grooves and letting their freak flag fly. Anyone who is keen for more from the same template is going to be more than happy with Victorious, the band’s fourth long-player and first since 2014’s New Crown. Wolfmother’s line-up may have been somewhat fluid over the years, but the song more or less remains the same. Not that it’s a bad thing, as there’s always a place for lively, in-your-face heavy rock music.Nevertheless, new textures and flavours do Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Brighton Festival 2016, which explodes into life again this year on Saturday May 7, has revealed its programme. Guest Director Laurie Anderson sent a short film in support of the occasion, while Chief Executive Andrew Comben, acknowledging this as the 50th edition of the Festival, added: “Every year since 1967 some of the greatest artists, performers and thinkers have come together with some of the most open-minded and enthusiastic audiences anywhere for a festival whose home is one of the most artistically rich and geographically blessed places in the country.”Indeed, the theme of this Read more ...
Andrew Cartmel
In its former life as the Millennium Dome, the O2 housed a diamond collection which attracted one of Britain’s most spectacular heists. Last night featured something considerably more valuable – the composer Ennio Morricone on tour, celebrating 60 years of music, accompanied by the magisterial forces of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the Kodály Choir from Hungary and the Csokonai National Theatre Choir. In his 87th year Morricone is small, deliberate, but surprisingly youthful and snazzily dressed in black.His baton floated in the air and music of aching melancholy lifted from the Read more ...
Thomas Rees
Described by Courtney Pine as "the most exciting jazz band to come out of the UK" and hailed in the press as the new young lions, Empirical broke cover in 2007, topping album of the year charts with their self-titled debut and picking up wins at the prestigious EBU/European Jazz Competition and the Peter Whittingham Jazz Award all within a few months.Originally a five-piece, with Kit Downes on piano and Jay Phelps on trumpet, they settled on their current line-up of bassist Tom Farmer, drummer Shane Forbes, altoist Nathaniel Facey and vibes-player Lewis Wright (a new recruit) in 2008. A trio Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The boisterous trio of Noah Lennox (drums, vocals, samples), David Portner (guitar, samples) and Brian Weitz (electronics, samples) have now released ten albums as Animal Collective. They also work individually under their aliases, Panda Bear, Avey Tare, and Geologist (are those all animals?), respectively. Previous albums have included Strawberry Jam (2007), and Centipede Hz (2012), but this latest has a higher-minded angle, concerned, say the band, “with art (Cubism, Dadaism, and the distorted way those artists viewed the world) and the human experience”.Aside from the opener, “ Read more ...
joe.muggs
The career of the Gran Canaria-born musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa seems to work in an accelerated time-frame, speeding through decades and eras as he develops his sound. Though he has always worked with digital technology, his early work sounded archaic, its massed carnival percussion and traditional melodies roaming around the Afro-Latin diaspora.Then, on 2008's Pop Negro, he embraced modernism, albeit still with a retro twist, rigorously examining and adopting the high-gloss production and songwriting techniques of the biggest mainstream American and Latino pop acts of the mid-1970s to mid-'90s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Paris Sisters were a look and a sound. Slightly different but still peas in a pod, Albeth, Priscilla and Sherrell Paris united to make often moodily minor-key music always suggestive of angels stamping their feet. Otherwordly. Yet hard-edged. The defining vocalist was Priscilla, whose slightly husky, ever-intimate mid-tone evoked the wind whispering its secrets. No one had sounded like her before and, at her best, only Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell has come close to Priscilla’s vivid union of the languorous and yearning.Albeth (1935-2014), Priscilla (1945-2004) and Sherrell had been Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The burden of expectation on Jack Garratt is somewhat unfair. Among the accolades he’s picked up over the past year are Critics Choice Brit Award 2015 and top slot in the BBC Sound of 2016. The latter puts him in the company of previous winners Years & Years, Sam Smith, Jessie J and Ellie Goulding, pop big hitters all. Clearly the music biz is expecting Garratt to make them a lot of money. They will sell him to us any which way they can – credible but pop, electronic underground but viable for the teen-girl fan market, etc. This makes churlish old dogs like me bridle but, really, it's Read more ...
mark.kidel
The Malian music scene has always been dominated by the griot caste, the jalis who serve as historians, praise-singers and guardians of the tradition. Rokia Traoré, like Salif Keita, isn’t a griot, but a member of the nobility. She is not bound by the same rules and expectations, and is free to take liberties that the servants of the great Manding heritage are not.This is the second of her collaborations with producer John Parrish, the Bristol-based musician who has been both inspiration and studio helpmate to PJ Harvey for many years. Thankfully, and unlike some other producers who have Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It would be easy to write off The Jezabels’ third album as style over substance. The gaudy, synth-heavy gloom-pop of Synthia seeks to catch you off guard with its sexualised sighs, sinewy rhythms and liquid melodies. It’s only on repeated listens that its wider themes emerge: gender roles and identity; desire and disgust and, in “Smile”, a devastating put-down of the everyday street-harasser.It begins with “Stand and Deliver” – an immersive, seven-and-a-half-minute synthesised dream sequence during which frontwoman Hayley Mary transforms from wide-eyed ingenue into high priestess of electro- Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If these decisions were made on the back of quality and creativity rather than marketing muscle, Barry Adamson wouldn’t just be taking care of the next Bond theme tune, he’d be scoring the whole film. Unfortunately, media and record company politics will ensure that we get another substandard cruise singer instead, and it’ll be everyone’s loss. Adamson’s soulful lounge jazz with grit and filmless soundtracks often suggest the legendary Lee Hazelwood fronting post-jazzers Get The Blessing with plenty of dark comedy, and Know Where To Run shows that after a 30-year solo career, there’s plenty Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In the latter half of the 1980s, Wendy James’s band Transvision Vamp created quite a stir. Their music, including a chart-topping second album, was fizzing, bright-coloured, punky power pop and James was a pouting, hissy-fit of a frontwoman, emanating urgent wannabe-famous sexuality. She disappeared from view in the Nineties, turning up again in the new millennium, first with a band, Racine, and then solo.The second and final Racine album and James’s 2010 solo effort, I Came Here to Blow Minds, boast an unexpectedly effective gnarled, druggy punk. These were followed by a 2012 double A-side Read more ...