New music
CD: Steve Earle & the Dukes - TerraplaneWednesday, 11 February 2015
There’s a lot to like about Steve Earle. He wears his hard times in clear view but has come out of them emanating a gritty positivism. Like Neil Young – in more ways than one – he also displays an admirable refusal to do the predictable.... Read more... |
Amina Figarova Sextet and Isfar Sarabski Trio, Ronnie Scott'sTuesday, 10 February 2015
“Jazzerbaijan”, the giddy publicity tag attached to last night’s double bill of Azeri jazz at Ronnie Scott’s, was sounding soberly appropriate by the end of a dazzling display of generic shape-shifting by the young Isfar Sarabski Trio. A packed and... Read more... |
CD: The Unthanks - Mount The AirMonday, 09 February 2015
The Unthank sisters may be best known for hauntingly bleak songs about dead babies and bald women but, it turns out, they’re not just about misery. Nor are they afraid to experiment. Their latest studio album, Mount The Air, is a floating... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Aalborg: Northern Winter Beat 2015Sunday, 08 February 2015
It’s the kind of care-worn venue that’s obviously seen some history. The walls are plastered with handbills for uncompromising bands like Billy Childish’s The Headcoats and America’s God Bullies. Some nosing reveals that it opened in 1983 and Green... Read more... |
Ennio Morricone, O2 ArenaSunday, 08 February 2015
This concert is called My Life in Music and the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone seems determined to take us on a journey from his origins in Italian B pictures to inarguable and gigantic orchestral opulence. In the 1960s he put together iconic... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Martin Hannett & Steve HopkinsSunday, 08 February 2015
Martin Hannett & Steve Hopkins: The Invisible GirlsWhile acclaimed for his glacial productions for Joy Division and New Order, Martin Hannett was also a musician in his own right. With bass guitar in hand and alongside composer-keyboard... Read more... |
CD: Father John Misty – I Love You, HoneybearSunday, 08 February 2015
Fifteen seconds into I Love You, Honeybear, it’s clear this an album concerned with sonic grandeur. Strings swell while a mournful pedal steel evokes the dejection of Gene Clark’s White Light, the 1971 album by the ex-Byrds member which has come to... Read more... |
CD: Esmé Patterson - Woman to WomanSaturday, 07 February 2015
Woman to Woman, the second solo album from Denver songwriter and former Paper Bird front woman Esmé Patterson, has an origin story almost as interesting as the music. Teaching herself to play Townes Van Zandt’s “Loretta” during some down time on... Read more... |
CD: The Subways – The SubwaysWednesday, 04 February 2015
It’s now more than 10 years since The Subways came roaring out of Hertfordshire in late 2004 with their adrenaline-charged debut single, “At 1 am”. Since then they’ve released three albums which have all threatened, but failed, to deliver the... Read more... |
CD: Bob Dylan - Shadows in the NightWednesday, 04 February 2015
Bob Dylan closed his recent concerts with a heart-rending version of “Stay with Me”, a melancholy lament made famous by Frank Sinatra. It's worth remembering that, born in 1941, Bob Dylan didn’t grow up on a diet of folk and blues. Sinatra was the... Read more... |
10 Questions for Rumer 2015Monday, 02 February 2015
Last autumn Rumer reappeared with her third album, Into Colour, surprising everyone with a lead single that was disco-flavoured. The rest of the album was closer in scope to the opulent LA easy listening and classic West Coast singer-songwriter fare... Read more... |
CD: Zhenya Strigalev's Smiling Organizm – Robin GoodieMonday, 02 February 2015
Russian saxophonist Zhenya Strigalev, whose band of stars Smiling Organizm has now released its second album, cuts a rather romantic figure in jazz, hopping from continent to continent, his saxophone as calling card. Along the way, he has... Read more... |
