New music
Thomas H. Green
The vibe in the Concorde last night was unbelievably up. The short version of this review is that the band are decent live but the crowd made the evening fizz with manic human electricity. Gorgon City, like a less funk-based Rudimental, performed songs that magpie about the history of electronic dance music, focusing especially on the classic house template, but attaching it all to soul-pop songwriting. DJ-producer duo, Foamo and Rack’n’Ruin, AKA Kye Gibbon and Matt Robson-Scott, appeared on either side of the stage in front of banks of synths, the latter with nine drum pads too, and then Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Several years ago, punk pranksters Art Brut had a tune called “Slap dash for no cash” which asked “Why is everyone trying to sound like U2? It’s not a very cool thing to do”. It seems that Imagine Dragons have gone one misstep further on Smoke + Mirrors – by trying to sound like Coldplay.Tracks like recent single “Shots”, “Smoke and mirrors” and “It comes back to you” are all aimed at the arena environment with Wayne Sermon’s twiddly, Edge-type guitars and a great dollop of 80s style production, courtesy of Alex Da Kid. Dan Reynolds’ lyrics meanwhile are consistently banal generalisations Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
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. From his appearances in the TV series The Wire to his novel, I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive, to the multiplicity of musical styles displayed on his 15 previous albums, he never seems tethered to the demands of any entertainment industry treadmill. At heart he’s a songwriter and Terraplane is his first stab at an all-out blues album.Happily, Read more ...
Matthew Wright
“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 exuberant audience thrilled to his sound, which seemed to transcend generic boundaries with a breath-taking lyricism and fluency. The first set, an accomplished, if perhaps more familiar sound from the Amina Figarova Sextet, had a more consistent Western focus, though Azeri music still featured in Figarova’s playing and compositions.Jazz in Read more ...
Russ Coffey
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, swirling, blend of folk, indie-rock, and jazz. For some, this will seem like a stylistic departure. But, for those who’ve kept up with their recent Diversions projects (which feature, inter alia, songs from Anthony and the Johnsons and Robert Wyatt) things may not appear so odd. Adrian McNally's piano motifs, in particular, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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 Day played here in 1993 while paving the way to conquering the world. 1000FRYD – “tusanfrid” if you’re Danish – is low-ceilinged, narrow, tiny and has a stage which would struggle to hold a band with more than five members.In Britain, 1000FRYD would be considered a “toilet venue” with all the downsides that brings but here in Denmark, despite the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
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 and resonant music on a tight budget, with limited ensembles and quirky instrumentation. These made his name, along with that of the director Sergio Leone. Tonight, clad in black, wearing a polo-neck, conducting the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and a mighty choir, he revels in hugeness. Now 86, this is Morricone’s rescheduled global tour, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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 player Steve Hopkins, the duo recorded as The Invisible Girls. Under that name, they provided music for albums by John Cooper-Clarke, ex-Penetration singer Pauline Murray and provided a sonic bed for Nico. They also contributed to Hannett-produced records by Durutti Column and Jilted John.The Invisible Girls celebrates a more under-the-radar Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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 define the nexus of the grand musical gesture and the intimate missive. As the title song album-opener progresses, Joshua Tillman sings “I’ve got my mother’s depression.”I Love You, Honeybear is the second album from Tillman in his Father John Misty guise and follows his 2012 departure from Fleet Foxes – he was their drummer. Overall, it’s his Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
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 tour, Patterson found herself getting frustrated at the song’s depiction of a passive bar-room girl so in awe of the great songwriter that she drops everything any time he passes through and “don’t cry” when he’s gone. She put down her guitar, picked up her pen and the result was “Tumbleweed”: a funny and furious riposte in which Patterson, playing Read more ...
Guy Oddy
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 widespread commercial success which the band certainly deserves. Their self-titled fourth album sees the Subways on familiar territory with plenty of catchy tunes and sing-along choruses and has the potential to finally move their career up a gear.Last year’s single, “My heart is pumping to a brand new beat” opens things up with a classy, Blondie-esque Read more ...
mark.kidel
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 biggest hit-maker of his early youth, a dominant presence on the airwaves he was exposed to as a child.This is no tribute album, neither is it a piece of opportunism, as Dylan has never traded on received ideas or well-tried music business tricks. Even his Christmas album was shot through with irony as well as joy. With Time out of Mind, which now Read more ...