New music
Markie Robson-Scott
If you liked the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, with its Dave Van Ronk-esque hero in Greenwich Village in 1961, you'll enjoy the new exhibition Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival, a celebration of NYC as the centre of folk music from its beginnings in the Thirties and Forties to its heyday in the Fifties and Sixties. It's at the Museum of the City of New York, far uptown at 103rd Street in east Harlem, a block or two from Duffy's Hill, the steepest in New York and the scene of many cable-car accidents in the 19th century. The kind of thing Peter, Paul and Mary might have Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Ian Levine’s Stax Soul SensationsTaking 41 years to follow up a successful compilation is perhaps not sound in commercial terms. No matter. Ian Levine’s Stax Soul Sensations is not about marketability, but instead about celebrating the music heard. This new collection of tracks drawn from the Memphis operation and its related imprints comes not-so-hot on the heels of 1974’s Solid Soul Sensations, another Levine-compiled set, which was dedicated to the associated Scepter and Wand labels.Beyond his fascination with Doctor Who, Levine has dedicated his life to soul music. Read more ...
caspar.gomez
One of the anomalies of the early 1980s synth-pop boom was how few bands there actually were. Most scenes that blow up have the main faces and a plethora of lesser acts with lesser hits. There were a few one-hit wonders and vanguard acts – Landscape, John Foxx, Yello etc. – but not really very many. The bottom line was the Human League, Gary Numan, OMD, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode. There was only one band who ran alongside that electro-gold quintet, mustering low-level hits and even three that crept into the outer reaches of the Top 10: Blancmange.Somehow the duo of Neil Arthur and Stephen Read more ...
james.woodall
Half a century ago today, on a warm August Sunday night in New York, The Beatles played a 30-minute concert in a baseball field. Home to the New York Mets the venue was called the William A Shea Municipal Stadium and had opened in spring 1964.In January 1965 Beatles manager Brian Epstein and US promoter Sid Bernstein had struck a deal to present the boys in the largest space they’d played in: it would be the first gig of the third US tour, and remained, by far, the biggest live event The Beatles ever did. It was, indeed, at the time the biggest instance of outdoor entertainment in history. A Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Billed as the hardest hitting Public Enemy album for years, Man Plans God Laughs has a lot to live up to; as far as sonic sledghammers go PE have more than their fair share. However, with lone Bomb Squad member Gary G-Wiz at the controls and the current socio-political climate in America built on the twin foundations of despair and anger, the stage is well-set for Chuck D to lay down the law at his direct, sloganeering best.“No Sympathy from the Devil” sees him dive right in, and just as well – the album clocks in at less than half an hour long so there’s no time to waste. Occasionally, Read more ...
Matthew Wright
You wake up with the multimedia traces of a Björk gig dancing across your eyes and the flavours of soft-shell crab and pomegranate playing across your tongue. The cluster of high-end dining establishments is denser than in Mayfair, yet the scenery in which they’re set - rolling parkland scattered with bunting-strewn marquees - looks more like the stage of a medieval battle re-enactment than the scene of the gourmand or connoisseur. In addition to which, before your morning shower, you queue up next to someone wearing a silver bodysuit and full facial glitter. (Maybe you’re wearing that Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In October a special tribute will be paid to the late great DJ Frankie Knuckles, the man who defined house music in the 1980s. A former bank In Chicago, now known as the Stony Island Arts Bank, which houses an archive relating to black culture, will be showcasing his gigantic record collection. It's unclear how it will be accessed - or even if it will be made generally available to the public, like a record library - but it's pleasing that the story of underground New York disco turning into Chicago house (and then heading out and taking over the world) is being physically documented in such Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Bands who successfully emulate their heroes on their debut album, as The Strypes did with Snapshot, their 2013 homage to sharp-edged garage blues, sometimes find themselves wondering where to go next when the dust of critical and popular acclaim settles. Instead of the well-worn path of a timid, evolutionary change to their sound, the Strypes have decided to shake things up considerably by throwing something from all their favourite bands into Little Victories. Unfortunately this has led to the creation of an album that is unfocused at best and derivative at worst. It also suggests that the Read more ...
mark.kidel
Iris DeMent’s settings of poems by the great 20th century poet Anna Akhmatova are as original as they are courageous: it's so easy to fall short of the genius displayed by the Russian mistress of the lyric verse. This is a work of love and devotion – prompted in part by DeMent’s adoption, along with her partner the equally original and talented Greg Brown, of a girl from the former Soviet Union.There is a kinship between the singer from the American South , raised in the Pentecostal church, and the tortured soul of Akhmatova, who lived through Lenin and Stalin’s terror, refused to go into Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A person with any sense of outdoor adventure can enjoy a camping trip with friends, especially when the skies are clear blue and blazing, the booze is decent and flowing, and the barbecue is tasty and sauced. Thus was the case with my trip to Eridge Park, in the northern reaches of Sussex, for a new festival from the team behind the Lake District’s successful, decade-old Kendal Calling. How much the festival itself contributed to the good times, however, is debatable.On Sunday, before leaving the site, I took a verbal poll of tens of attendees, asking them to score the festival on the usual Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Company could have been recorded any time in the past 25 years. Although Slime’s debut feels fresh, affinities with the familiar tag Company as a retro-nodding debut which will have a broad appeal. Chin-stroking collectors will love its references. Hipsters dwelling in the edgy zones of cities will love the comedown, late-night, reflective atmosphere. The Newcastle-born, Hackney resident electronicist Will Archer – who assumes the name Slime – has created an album with the potential to cross boundaries.The chief attribute of Company is the ease with which it brings together the disparate as a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
America: The Warner Bros. Years 1971–1977Prime amongst the many ironies associated with Seventies soft-rock trio America is that when they reached number one in America in March 1972 with “A Horse With No Name”, the single they knocked off the top spot was Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold". “A Horse With No Name” sounds so like Young, it might as well be him. Young’s thoughts on the ousting are not a matter of record.It went further. America’s fine, eponymous debut album is so much a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young knock-off that frequent double takes are unavoidable. CSNY's distinctive, Read more ...