New music
Adam Sweeting
Jack White (the former John Anthony Gillis) was born in Detroit and now lives in Nashville, a geographical progression you can hear in his music. He loves rude, dirty rock'n'roll but also has a fine instinct for country music, both of which tendencies are splurged all over this consistently inspired album (his second solo venture and the follow-up to 2012's Blunderbuss). You won't hear any country music played sweeter than "Entitlement" (not that the lyric's particularly sweet, mind), yet White can also create a rockin' wall of chaos like "Three Women", which sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis and Read more ...
Guy Oddy
We have been told for years by the media, the record industry and “taste-makers” everywhere that popular music is resolutely a young person’s game. Carefree youth is what it’s all about and any sign of ageing, maturity or artistry and most musicians will be shown the door and put out to pasture unless they are revisiting past glories. In 2014, Swans put paid to this myth by releasing To Be Kind, the most impressive album of their 32 year (on-off) existence under the direction of Michael Gira – the band’s 60-year-old vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and band leader.To Be Kind is a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The year 2014 has been dominated by this woman's arse. The furore surrounding the video for Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" put the rest of the bewigged New York hip hop superstar's career in the shade. Her steamy twerk-fest and rejig of Sir Mix-A-Lot's 1991 mega-hit "Baby's Got Back" ("I like big butts and I cannot lie...") opened up internet-breaking levels of debate. Did she represent modern womankind, strong and in charge of her sexuality, pushing the boundaries for the Afro-American body-shape and fighting air-brushed anorexic celeb culture? Or was it all a load of porno dodginess? I'd veer Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Have you been to a record shop lately? Now that our honeymoon with virtual music is revealed as completely lacking romance, record shops are thriving again. And it’s not CDs these shoppers are after. Those have been squeezed off into a far corner stocking only immediately sellable fare such as The Beatles, The Smiths, Led Zep, and early Oasis. No, the rest of the shop has been taken over by hoards, layers, tranches of alphabetized 12” vinyl, ordered by genre. Whether it’s regarded as whacky retro chic or simply a return to the “good old days”, vinyl boom times are here.For many music lovers, Read more ...
joe.muggs
Pity everyone who's already published their albums of the year lists. Like Beyonce in 2013, D'Angelo has just thrown the most humungous spanner in the works, and changed the year's musical landscape in a single day. Pity, too, everyone else who's released a record even vaguely in the vicinity of hip hop / soul / R&B today, as they might as well be shouting in a vacuum (especially poor Tenessee rapper Starlito who managed to drop an album on the same day as Jay-Z's Magna Carter Holy Grail last year, and now has to deal with this).Yes, this was just released today, and yes, it is an album Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
2014 has been a juicy year for albums which places Nick Mulvey’s solo debut on an especially high pedestal. A straightforward review can be found elsewhere on theartsdesk, when I first thrilled to his music earlier in the year. In the meantime, those other contenders deserve a mention, the ones that came closest to unseating Mulvey during prolonged listening sessions here at Gomez Mansions.The new one from Canadian DJ-producer Richie Hawtin’s lysergic techno persona Plastikman has done serious time on the late night system. Composed for and recorded live at an event in New York’s Guggenheim Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Human League front-load their set to such a degree it’s unclear how they’re going to maintain such momentum. Their stage set is amazing, just for starters. Stage-length steps rise up to a podium at the back, on which two synth-players are placed either side of the drummer, the backing band, all of them and all around in white. Surrounding the whole lot are three layers of equally white hoarding upon which projections and lighting effects envelop the performance. It’s extremely well designed, impressive and effective.Susan Sully and Joanne Catherall appear to cheers, clad in white dresses Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Czars: Best ofQueen of Denmark, John Grant’s first solo album, seemed to arrive from nowhere in 2010. Here was a singer-songwriter with a unique voice evoking disparate wellsprings Eric Carmen, Randy Newman and Lionel Richie. When taken with a dramatically affecting songwriting sensibility and arresting, self-lacerating lyrics, all of this rendered the album instantly impactful.The immediate backstory was that Midlake had heard Grant’s songs, were taken with them and volunteered to be his backing band on the sessions which led to Queen of Denmark. Grant himself was then in a bad way, in Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Swedish trombonist and bandleader Nils Landgren has been creating eclectic Christmas compilations for nearly ten years now, and has, in the popular jazz market at least, created a successful niche, selling “jazz platinum” in Germany, where the ACT label is based. His success is due to a generous, open-minded approach to repertoire that first surprises with its apparent incongruity, then seduces with its class.When did you last hear George Michael, Duke Ellington, John Rutter, Odetta and traditional carols performed on the same album, all with sincerity and integrity? It’s perhaps a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There is a moment in the singer Tracey Thorn’s autobiography, Bedsit Disco Queen, where she credits Fairport Convention with being more DIY, indie and autonomous than any punk rocker. She’s not being facetious, she simply admires the way they’ve built their career, most especially the annual Cropredy Festival, as a cottage industry among friends, connecting directly with their fanbase, maintaining the root values of folk hippiedom intact for decades. I can only concur with Thorn. Fairport are an entirely admirable entity. I have not, however, made as much progress with most of their music. Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Can Christmas spirit be bottled? Well, there are certainly some songs that can effectively make us drunk on goodwill rather than gin and sherry. Paul McCartney’s “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” and the whole of A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector are two fine examples. Earth, Wind & Fire are the latest to try to distil the essence of Christmas, and it seems to have been a success. In fact, they must have identified the exact genetic code of festive cheer in order to remove it from nearly every track in this collection of holiday songs with the ruthless efficiency Read more ...
Matthew Wright
In 1984 Duran Duran were at the height of their fame. Seven and the Ragged Tiger, the band’s third studio album, became their first (and only) number one soon after its release in November the previous year, and announced a sharper, more dance-friendly, synth-driven sound. The world tour (apparently the band wanted to spend a year abroad to avoid tax), began in Australia, but was mostly spent in Canada and the US. It was the band’s first as major headliners.They played 51 shows to over half a million people, and were received with delirious abandon almost everywhere they went. It seemed at Read more ...