New music
Matthew Wright
Stylistically, they’re a psychedelic kaleidoscope of a band, but that didn’t stop Unknown Mortal Orchestra getting the O2 Shepherd’s Bush swaying hypnotically last night. Their jagged, breaking grooves, burnished analogue synth and drone-like choruses take in everything from Stevie Wonder to Captain Beefheart, via a slew of indie, garage and psychedelia, but the effect is unique and compelling.Last night’s show included songs from all three albums, with three distinct sounds; three is also important for front-man Ruban Neilson’s writing on the latest release, Multi-Love, which tells the story Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The title of Don Henley's fifth solo album refers to the rural area of East Texas where he grew up, listening to country music stations like Shreveport's fabled Louisiana Hayride and absorbing the building blocks of the country-rock sound he forged with the Eagles. The Eagles went through many changes, but country remains close to Henley's heart, and Cass County sounds like the country albums that used to come out of the old Nashville in the 1950s and Sixties. Try his version of the Louvin Brothers' 1955 hit "When I Stop Dreaming", remade here as a scintillating duet with Dolly Parton.Despite Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Lana Del Rey’s breakthrough single “Video Games” and its parent album, Born To Die gave the impression of a modern day Nancy Sinatra with added hip hop production, while its follow-up Ultraviolence added a bluesy twist to her sound. Honeymoon, however, brings a sophisticated world-weariness to the party and may come to be regarded as her signature album in years to come.Whereas Del Rey previously gave the impression of being a hip young thing that did the odd daft thing, now she seems to be channelling Dorothy Vallens, from David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, with tales of melancholy and regret that Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s a new book out called Red: A Natural History of the Redhead, which gets to the heart of what it is to have the ginger gene, be it Boudicca or Jessica Rabbit. It says coppertops are more prone to bee stings, and perfume gives off a different odour on their skin. And then there are the more hackneyed ascriptions: flaming hair implies fieriness, wildness, total and utter otherness etc. This is not to solicit a visit from the ginger police, but can anyone picture Florence Welch with a short sensible peroxide crop?She’d be a much tamer beast than the creature who opened her Alexandra Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
New Order's first album of new material since 2005's Waiting for the Siren's Call reveals a band sounding rejuvenated and fighting fit, despite the fact that they're halfway through their fourth decade. The current lineup is original members Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris, now augmented by guitarist Phil Cunningham and bassist Tom Chapman, the latter filling the giant boots of the departed Peter Hook. But there's no doubt the new chemistry works, and the songs here run the gamut of dance, rock, electronica and even disco with a kind of manic glee.There's nothing resembling Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Faces: You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything… 1970–1975Faces were always about more than just the music. From the moment they were formed by ex-members of The Jeff Beck Group and Small Faces in June 1969, tension was integral. Their front man and singer Rod Stewart ran a parallel solo career throughout the band’s life and the public image as boozy, cheeky lads was useful for papering over any cracks. The story is worth telling, but it is not one told by this collection of their studio albums and singles – more on that in a few paragraphs.Sometimes, the tension surfaced. Talking to Read more ...
Martin Longley
The Chicago Jazz Festival is a freebie extravaganza, held over the Labor Day holiday weekend, its massive crowds welcomed by the looming chromium jelly bean that is sculptor Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. Onward into Millennium Park, right on the shore of Lake Michigan, there are a pair of long tents for the afternoon sets, with alternating bands ensuring constant musical motion.The evening performances take place on the impressive Jay Pritzker Pavilion stage, designed by Frank Gehry. Completed in 2004, it’s been the jazz festival’s home for the last three years of its 36-year history. It’s as if Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
As the year in which Jenny Hval has already declared war on “soft dick rock”, 2015 seems perfect for the return of Peaches: the electroclash shock-rock pioneer’s bass-heavy, provocative music is the diametric opposite. Rub, her first album in six years, comes as an audio and visual package: each track is accompanied by an artist-directed video featuring everything from Peaches and comedian Margaret Cho sharing a day of zany adventures while dressed in matching hand-knit body suits (complete with comically oversized, flapping penises) to performance artist Empress Stah shooting lasers from a Read more ...
joe.muggs
Natasha Khan has taken a fascinating trajectory through the music world. As Bat For Lashes she first came to public attention as part of an early-2000s wave of psychedelia, allied in particular to the furry starchild Devendra Banhart. But her high drama electropop-tinged sound was as far from Banhart's all-organic “freak folk” as it was from the fiddlier laptop-driven sound of folktronica, and she ended up occupying a space all her own. Only the similarly theatrical Marina & The Diamonds came close to her approach, although the ghastly Florence would ride an altogether crasser and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The New York Times recently wrote that, “For the music business over all, vinyl is still a niche product, if an increasingly substantial one.” How substantial is slowly becoming clear with dramatic rises in vinyl consumption over the last year. The biggest pressing plant in Europe, in the Czech village of Lodenice, last year produced 14.5 million records, while across the US during the same period 13 million were sold, with around 50% of the buyers under 35. It is, of course, a drop in the ocean compared to vinyl’s glory days but, with predictions of a rise in consumption of up to 50% over Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Courtney Pine’s Caribbean-flavoured album House of Legends was released three years ago, and it says a lot that he’s still touring it. This riotously melodic collection of ska, soca and calypso, embellished with some scorching solo work, has certainly proved popular, as the latest sell-out run at Ronnie’s testifies. Pine cheerfully apologised for a lack of CD’s to sell at the gig: they’ve all been sold.However, a critic more prone to stroke his chin than shake his (or her) booty (chin-stroking being generally a male pastime) would probably suggest that this reflects a certain lack of urgency Read more ...
Matthew Wright
For three unassuming musicians, sitting cross-legged in a row, Korean folk-noise fusion band Jambinai’s London debut last night was seismic. With an ambitious project to integrate the techniques and idioms of traditional Korean folk with a blend of noise-rock, drone-rock and electronic music, they gave a concert that was, from the moment the grinding drone of the geomungo started yawing through the crowd, utterly distinct and original.There are two formations performing, a trio of multi-instrumentalists, with Eun Young Sim playing geomungo (a traditional seven-stringed zither, plucked with a Read more ...