New music
Matthew Wright
With this likeable and quietly adventurous release, fears that Belle and Sebastian were losing momentum, amid the distractions of Stuart Murdoch’s God Help the Girl project, and the appearance of only two albums in nine years, can now be allayed. If they haven’t broken through in quite the way that the successes of their 1990s albums might have predicted, after nearly 20 years the band hasn’t broken up either, and the creative fecundity of this collection suggests a rejuvenation in progress.These songs combine a subtly modern sense of generic blending, combined with an old-fashioned Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Last month, Theo Parrish released his album, American Intelligence, on vinyl and CD. Now it’s available on digital, but make sure you’ve got room on your hard drive – it’s long. Seriously, marathons have been run quicker than the two hours and three minutes here.Things start well. “Drive” is a long, straight road of a track with all exits barred by stuttering cymbals. It’s compelling stuff, but Parrish, having created an audio autobahn, sticks to 70 all the way – presumably trying to pace himself. “Life Spice” is next and the sample, which sounds like it was cut on a slant, is more in keeping Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
At first it seems akin to entering a world conjured by Efterlkang at their most elegiac. Strings swell and what sounds like a cimbalom chimes. A wordless vocal sighs. After the opening instrumental – titled “Intro” – “Lovers Lane” (sic) surges forward with cascading post-punk guitar recalling Manchester’s Chameleons and a deep, deep mumbled vocal which through the murky delivery seems to be concerned with trying to get the song’s subject to wake up and realise who the singer is. After that squall, the Mittel-European two-step rhythm of the acoustic “Come on Then” and more of those stygian Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Wild Billy Childish has released well over a hundred albums (as well as numerous art projects) since the late 70s and so it's quite a shock to discover on Acorn Man that his muse doesn’t seem ready to desert him any time soon. This is all the more surprising given that the Childish world view ends in the pre-psychedelic mid-60s and is dominated by no-nonsense garage rock – with absolutely no truck with any musical developments since that time.Opening track, “It’s So Hard To Be Happy” is lively Nuggets-influenced stuff that sounds like Archie Solomons (from the TV series Peaky Blinders) Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Ever wondered what being a psychic would be like? Not the "being a fraudulent, cheap-trick magician drunk on the mere suggestion of power over a willing and eager mark" thing – but really being able to know people’s thoughts as they think them. In reality, hearing the insipid mind-screams of strangers would be spirit-crushingly dull, like watching Question Time without the mute button, but there is a less prosaic window into the mind that music offers us – improvisation.Gaussian Curve is a project featuring ambient veteran Gigi Masin, Land of Light multi-instrumentalist Jonny Nash and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
For a band dealing in noise and sonic possibilities, the niches at the coalface on which to get a foothold are few and far between. The sound has been mined for years and one has to wonder whether there are any new strains we’ve not heard somewhere before. Spectres certainly seem to think there are and, judging by their debut LP, Dying, they’re keen to prove this point to anyone within a thousand-mile radius.Opener “Drag” is almost painfully onomatopoeic – however, where some noiseniks seem happy to sound like they're so full of louche ennui that they can barely be arsed to lean over the cusp Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
The regal countenance of St. Vincent’s fourth self-titled solo album cover reflects the poise and confidence of Annie Clark’s otherworldly, powerful and playful music. This assured album marks her incredible progression as a unique and highly skilled artist and it brims with the kind of fearless honesty that her fans have become accustomed to.Complex compositions sit proudly alongside lyrics that scrutinise both the modern world and Clark’s personal experiences. The opening song "Rattlesnake" recalls a time when Clark threw caution to the wind, stripped naked, wandered through the desert and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Powder: Ka-Pow! An Explosive Collection 1967–68It’s an instantly familiar sound. Crescendo follows crescendo, and power chord follows power chord. For The Who, “I Can see for Miles” was the apex of this style. But this is not The Who. Instead, it is a band from California called Powder whose shelved album from 1968 was crammed with thrilling, British-influenced gems. Like Todd Rundgren's contemporaneous band The Nazz, Powder filtered a British sensibility through an American outlook.Ka-Pow! collects the surviving recordings by Powder and the band they seamlessly evolved from, The Art Read more ...
Barney Harsent
2014 has seen a fair few late lunges for the line in the race to be my best album of the year (a contest fought more for prestige and honour than hard cash in all honesty). I’m a mild-mannered sort, and hate disappointing the recording artists clearly hanging on my every word for validation, but Theo Parrish, Spectres and Craig Bratley will have to settle for commendations along with Goat, The War on Drugs, Peaking Lights and Klaus Johann Grobe this time. Jane Weaver’s The Silver Globe has taken gold – and done so with clear distance between it and the rest of the pack.Where the concept Read more ...
james.woodall
Summer was nigh. In May 1969 the Lennons bought Tittenhurst Park, an 85-acre estate in the same stockbroker belt as John’s first Beatles home, Kenwood. It needed work and a while would pass before they moved in. At EMI, John and Yoko busied themselves with their resistible third LP, The Wedding Album. Heroin intake was vigorous.There were many soi-disant Apple-Allen Klein business meetings through April and May, most of which went nowhere. One of them, however, at Olympic Studios in Barnes in south-west London (on 9 May), was overshadowed by three Beatles having, the previous day, pledged Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Morrissey went beyond parody years ago. Titles on his 10th solo album such as "Kick The Bride Down The Aisle” or “Earth is the Loneliest Planet” could easily come from a Buzzfeed spot-the-send-up list. But barge your way past this initial obstacle and World Peace Is None Of Your Business is one of the venerable pop poet’s best albums in years.It is also one of his most stylistically eclectic. A change in band personnel seems to have prompted a broadening of his musical canvas. For someone frequently accused of Little Englander tendencies there are exotic trumpet solos and flashes of flamenco Read more ...
Matthew Wright
It’s the subtlety of this album that gets you, stealthily, like an intoxicating vapour, until you wonder what your listening world was like before you encountered its heady, narcotic pulse. It seems a shame to get all musicological about a sound that breathes such sultry, natural life, but essentially, McFarlane fuses jazz and neo-soul. It's then filtered through her unusually broad personal and musical perspective, based on professional experience in musical theatre, pop and jazz, and a home filled with reggae.Black British women are rare in jazz; those who cover reggae songs, as she does Read more ...