New music
Guy Oddy
Guadalupe Plata are a Spanish three-piece whose tunes will be a sonic treat for those who like their blues raw but with an extra dash of flavour. On their self-titled second album, spikey blues, bebop and rockabilly sounds rub up against the Moorish and Romany roots of Andalusian traditional music to produce a very special gumbo that will appeal to lovers of RL Burnside, Tav Falco, Link Wray and gutsy Latino bands like The Plugz and Tito and Tarantula. In fact, there are plenty of times on this disc when Guadalupe Plata could quite easily be deputising for the supernaturally groovy house band Read more ...
joe.muggs
Ryuichi Sakamoto must be the most low-key megastar around. He came to prominence with the witty electro of Yellow Magic Orchestra in the late 1970s, then with some era-defining soundtracks like Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and The Last Emperor in the 1980s. Latterly, though, his work has been quite extraordinarily subdued and experimental – collaborations with far-leftfield glitch, electronica and ambient luminaries like Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto, Sachiko M and Taylor Deupree – yet interest in him remains so great that when I published a short interview with him and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This album is a gorgeous New Year surprise. Much of it is a delicious investigation of old-fashioned pre-rock songwriting, but done from the heart rather than for kitsch kicks. Sometimes this means it wanders into easy listening which, after all, was originally just swing generation musicians continuing in their own sweet way long after the world had followed The Beatles instead. Then again, there’s also something of The Beatles here too – or at least their production mastermind George Martin – in the orchestral pomp of songs such as the confessional “What’s a Man To Do?” and the “I Am the Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Originally available on cassette only, Odd Nosdam's Trish has now become the producer and former member of hip-hop pioneers cLOUDDEAD's first release for the Sonic Cathedral label. With six tracks coming in at just under half an hour, it falls into the hinterland between EP and album – a kind of musical novella. This means that there are certain constraints at play here, yet the shortened format is, in reality, a strength. It allows for a particular continuity of style and a cohesive tone, which lends the songs a tangible story arc – something that feels entirely fitting for a work in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It had been a decade-long wait for this first collection of new material since Waiting for the Siren's Call, but reports of New Order's creative atrophy proved ill-informed. The rancorous departure of bassman Peter Hook rumbled on in the background, but new man Tom Chapman slotted in with practised ease, and with Gillian Gilbert back aboard, the New Order collective sounded as punchy and cohesive as it ever had, mixing thumping rock and dance beats with a euphoric blitz of electronica.It was the disc's clarity and sense of purpose that impressed most. Addressing the question of how to sound Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
January 1966 is a half a century back but some of the music released 50 years ago this month remains fresh, vital and timeless. With its biting invective and energy, Bob Dylan’s “Can You Please Crawl out of Your Window” will never lose its visceral edge. Dusty Springfield’s joyful, kinetic “Little by Little” is eternally alive. Author Jon Savage goes further and pinpoints the whole of 1966 as “the year that shaped the rest of the century”. His proposition uses the year’s pop music as evidence for 1966 as a year like no other: one which was pivotal and irrevocably changed the world.Savage Read more ...
mark.kidel
From the younger generation’s offerings of the past year, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly stands out, sparkling with invention, risk-taking, personal openness and social engagement. Bob Dylan’s interpretation of songs made famous by Frank Sinatra, would seem, in comparison, to be taking a more conservative path, revisiting songs that sat squarely in the middle of the road when they were first written, mostly before the mid-point of the last century.And yet... Dylan’s sweetly melancholic series of classics from the great American Song Book have a freshness that makes them totally of now. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When was the last time a singer really spoke to your inner thoughts? Not the sanitised version you offer up on Facebook, nor even your occasional breakdown, but the everyday stuff – the indignation, cynicism and justifiable anger you carry around with you. That was John Grant's Grey Tickles, Black Pressure in a nutshell. At face value the stern-faced singer may have been exploring the experiences of being a successful middle-aged gay artist with HIV and piles, but there was more. By offering such a candid view of his life he also became a darkly humorous proxy Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Music can be passed down through generations like family heirlooms, precious and forever.For me, I was gifted Johnny Cash, Perry Como, Burt Bacharach, Joni Mitchell, Elton John. Songs that have resonated with me throughout my whole life, seeing me through good times, hard times, first dances, big birthdays or life-changing gigs.For my kids, I want to give them Jewel. Her musical poetry has seen me through key moments – those first tentative steps taken with Pieces of You and Spirit when I was living alone in London for the first time at 18; or This Way, when I was finding my path, travelling Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Motörhead played loud rock ’n’ roll. Now, like The Ramones, they are gone. They burned with unbelievable vigour from the mid-Seventies until earlier this year, when the wheels started to fall off Lemmy’s wagon. His health suddenly gave way – as was clear at this year’s Glastonbury Festival – and now, as one of his greatest songs roared with rabid conviction and a cheeky wink, he has finally been killed by death.Whatever their line-up, from the mid-Seventies until his death on December 28 this year, Motörhead were Lemmy Kilmister’s conception. He was a confident, down-to-earth, post-hippy Read more ...
theartsdesk
So, the first day's done. We awake, bleary-eyed and emerge from our tents and survey the scene. No matter how bad it looks for our immediate future health, the clouds are sure to clear before the inaugural beer and opening bands. The quality continues as we run through the very best we've seen this year to create the best bespoke festival we can imagine given theartsdesk's collective gig-going this year. In short, ladies and gentlemen… welcome to Sunday's line up of theartsfest 2015.MAIN STAGEMadonna 10.00 - 11.30It was perhaps the most-anticipated live tour of the year, though in many Read more ...
joe.muggs
For some musicians operating on the leftfield, achieving accessibility or commercial success means compromising their unique vision. Not so with Los Angeles singer-songwriter-producer Julia Holter. Her first three albums – four, if you include 2009's home-burned CDR Celebration – were intriguing, if blurry, windows into a complicated inner world, within which intensely felt dreams and extraordinary erudition tangled up into constantly moving patterns, but the haze rarely revealed any distinct shapes.Have You in My Wilderness, however, marks a dramatic coming out into the world: not only does Read more ...