New music
CD: Andreya Triana - GiantsMonday, 27 April 2015
Andreya Triana’s second solo album has been five years in the making, and with a title like Giants, it’s presumably intended to make an impression. As you’d expect from the time it’s spent gestating, this is a mature and nuanced release, certainly... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: DionSunday, 26 April 2015
Dion: Recorded Live at the Bitter End August 1971By 1971, when he was playing the Bitter End in New York’s Greenwich Village, Dion DiMucci had already experienced the equivalent of two separate stints as a pop star. In 1961, he began a run of... Read more... |
CD: Olivia Chaney - The Longest RiverSunday, 26 April 2015
Olivia Chaney’s reputation as a singular folk singer and songwriter has been bubbling on and off the radar for some years now. There were EPs in 2010 and 2013, and she featured on the excellent Peter Bellamy tribute, 2011’s Oak Ash and Thorn, and... Read more... |
The Return of Peter PerrettSunday, 26 April 2015
Five songs. Five new songs is what we get. Not much on the face of it but this is still a very special occasion. Peter Perrett has resurfaced and in the basement of Rough Trade West he, with backing from his son Jamie, is performing. The place is... Read more... |
The Fall, Brixton ElectricSunday, 26 April 2015
They begin with “My Door is Never” from 2007 album Reformation Post TLC, and close a little over an hour later with “Sparta FC”, from early in the century, and from a long-gone Fall line-up. In between, a flurry of blurred, brutal songs from the new... Read more... |
CD: Blur - The Magic WhipSaturday, 25 April 2015
Few would have predicted it back when they were gooning around in over-tight Adidas t-shirts, but with the benefit of hindsight it makes sense that Blur should have the most convincing longevity of the Britpop generation. Why? Because more than any... Read more... |
Public Service Broadcasting, Corn Exchange, BrightonThursday, 23 April 2015
A band are doing well if they have their audience laughing and cheering before they’ve even hit the stage. Such is the case with Public Service Broadcasting who show a creaky public information-style animation, with a distinct 1970s feel, prior to... Read more... |
Three Tales, Ensemble BPM, IMAX Science MuseumThursday, 23 April 2015
Poised vibrantly enough between the buried-alive monotony of Philip Glass and the dynamic flights of John Adams, Steve Reich’s Three Tales deserves a special place in music-theatre history ("opera" it is not). Ironically, since it deals with the two... Read more... |
CD: Jenny Lysander - Northern FolkThursday, 23 April 2015
There’s a certain sound - one that I’d describe as “pastoral folk”, without ever being certain of what that means - that has always struck me as quintessentially English. Jenny Lysander’s debut album is one that ticks many of those boxes: sparse... Read more... |
Laura Marling, QEHWednesday, 22 April 2015
There’s no doubting the precocious talent of Laura Marling. At just 25 she recently released her fifth album, Short Movie, which matched the spiky introspection of song-writing previously driven by folk melodies with a new rock-orientated sound.... Read more... |
CD: Snarky Puppy and Metropole Orkest - SylvaWednesday, 22 April 2015
From fulsome, modally inflected string lines (“Sintra”) to the funkiest of New Orleans brass grooves (“Atchafalaya”), this first major label album from Grammy-winning, NYC-based collective Snarky Puppy, paired here with Holland's crack... Read more... |
10 Questions for Musician Ron SexsmithMonday, 20 April 2015
Ron Sexsmith is a singer-songwriter who should, by rights, need no introduction: Critics and fellow musicians, after all, fall over themselves to praise the 51 year-old Canadian. Yet, despite a gorgeous back-catalogue and fans including Paul... Read more... |
