New music
Thomas H. Green
The 1990s were a great time for electronic dreamers. Before social networks and cat videos and tedium there was a sense of romance about “cyberspace”. This “virtual universe” seemed to have the potential to be cosmic, narcotic and exciting. There were even “brain machines”! It felt like we might meet a benevolent version of The Lawnmower Man around the next corner. Boosting this sense of possibility was a newish sound called “techno”, and futurist acts with sci-fi music and shows. Chief among them were Orbital, Future Sound of London and Leftfield. The last of these, a London duo who brought Read more ...
Guy Oddy
As Britain stares down the barrel of another five years of austerity, it’s disappointing that so few of the country’s musicians have anything to say about the very bad times that are heading our way. Slaves, however, have very definitely got something to say about the state of the world and Are You Satisfied? is the roar of a generation that knows that no-one is coming to save them.“The Hunter” sets out Slaves’ stall with equal parts social observation and wild hedonism. Isaac Holman’s thumping beat and Lauire Vincent’s menacing guitar back a chant of “It’s reckless and it’s pointless but it’ Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Sticky Fingers is the Stones’ defining album, a record that preserves the band in all its ragged, outlaw rock'n'roll glory. It captured them, too, between worlds of their own making, as the exploratory Sixties solidified into the excessive Seventies, Mick Jagger turned left into the first-class jet-set life, and Keith Richards turned the other way, into an image-defining drug addiction, scoring his mythos as permanently as a prison tattoo. Some things never fade away.In pretty well every aspect – music, image, cover, line-up – Sticky Fingers represents the Rolling Stones at their peak, on the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
That How Big How Blue How Beautiful is as much a mission statement as an album title will come as little surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity with either Florence Welch or her pop juggernaut of a voice. With new producer Marcus Dravs – known for his work with the arena-filling stadium rock likes of Arcade Fire and Coldplay – on board, rumours that the album would showcase a subtler change in direction were always going to turn out to be exaggerated. But on the strength of some of the finer moments on Welch’s third album – and there are many of them – anything else Read more ...
Matthew Wright
You might think that the carefree, gleeful melodies of sunny Californian surf-rock giants The Beach Boys would render them immune to the kind of egotistical wedge-driving that sunders most rock groups eventually. You would, of course, be wrong. Shortly after the band’s 50th-anniversary world tour in 2012, Mike Love, who owns the band’s name, took it away for his own version of the Beach Boys, leaving founder (and widely acknowledged musical genius) Brian Wilson and Al Jardine behind. Rumours, which will receive a thorough airing in the next year when first Wilson, then Love, publish their Read more ...
Thomas Rees
Though they're separated by thousands of miles, Cuba and Mali share a common musical connection. Right at the heart of Cuban music lie rhythms from sub-saharan African and last night the two traditions were united once again when Havana-born piano virtuoso Roberto Fonseca (of Buena Vista Social Club fame) took the stage with Fatoumata Diawara, a Malian singer and guitarist who is fast becoming a giant of the world music scene.The pair first met when Fonseca invited Diawara to feature on his 2012 release Yo, in which he explored his own African roots. Since then they seem to have been Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Merle and Willie – these kind of senior country summits can either be a bit of a coaster, all well and good underneath your tumbler of Bourbon, or actually something to write home about. Keep this one away from the liquor. It’s produced by Buddy Cannon, who's worked with Willie Nelson on five albums since 2008, including last year's excellent Band of Brothers, and is co-writer on four more late-period Willie Nelson tunes – small, well-turned gems that continue to make the world a better place by being here, and collaborated on by text messaging, according to an interview in The Tennessean. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marvin Gaye: Marvin Gaye 1961–1965On single, Marvin Gaye’s earliest years were defined by a head-long rush beginning with his fourth 45, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow". After that, future classic followed future classic: "Hitch Hike", "Pride and Joy", "Can I Get a Witness", “How Sweet it is (to be Loved by You)", "Ain't That Peculiar" and more. The years 1962 to 1965 were a musical goldmine for this multi-faceted singer and songwriter.On album, Marvin Gaye’s earliest years were somewhat more complex. Where his label Tamla (odd issues came via related imprint Motown) went for the direct and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It seems a peculiar conceit to pack up a full symphony orchestra and choir and take them the length of the UK solely to perform suites of music from a popular television show – and I say this as a fan of the show in question. Yet I left the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular with a newfound appreciation for both the soundtrack as an art form in general, and for the work of Murray Gold – the composer responsible for the show’s music since its return in 2005 – in particular.The aptly-named “spectacular” mixed live-action appearances from some of the show’s most iconic nasties, Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The Darkness, despite their current sober lifestyle, claim to be back with music that makes “women weak at the knees and men shit their pants”. If only. The lorry loads of booze and cocaine may be a thing of the past, but also, it seems, is their muse. Somewhere along the way, the boys have forgotten what people love about them. And for all the industrial riffs and squealing vocals, Last of Our Kind doesn’t actually offer much in the way of fun.Ironically, trying to sound less like a parody, has, if anything, made the band even more cartoonish. Before the heavy-grinding “Mudslide”, for Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A long time ago I went out into the field to research a feature about the three ages of obsessive fandom. At the entry level was a bog-standard legion of young teenage girls who simply hung around outside the mansion block in Maida Vale where one or possibly both of the Gosses (of Bros) lived. I also met three young women who had access to Jason Donovan’s diary and were traipsing around town in the hope of glimpse. Donovan’s star had waned but they hadn’t moved on. Most tragic was my dinner in Soho with a Boy George lookalike, a dolled-up marionette who gave himself airs and got chauffeured Read more ...
Jasper Rees
To begin at the very bizarre ending. Fleetwood Mac, finally reunited as a five-piece with Christine McVie stage right on luscious vocals and keyboard, had just thrashed out a show of great finesse for two hours. It had all gone peachily. McVie was given a last lovely encore - “Songbird” – crooned solo on a grand piano. That should have been it. Many were already going, or gone.But after one last bow Stevie Nicks, as ever an accident in a taffeta factory, had a rambling tale to tell about McVie’s prodigal return after 16 years. This bathetic oration lasted about three minutes. Then Mick Read more ...