New music
Kieron Tyler
Wire: Document and EyewitnessEven when taking account of the elasticity brought by punk splintering into the myriads of left turns, new directions and dead ends of what became post-punk, the trajectory of Wire was eccentric. Document and Eyewitness was the final and fourth album they issued before their reformation in 1985, having first split up in 1980. Ostensibly a live album, Document and Eyewitness captures Wire’s final show, on 29 February 1980, at Camden’s Electric Ballroom. It was an evening which continued what they had begun during a residency at The Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Fence Collective – originally a group of mates coming together to sing in a pub in Fife – has given the world an extraordinary roll-call of exceedingly durable singer-songwriter talent. The likes of the Anderson brothers Kenny, Ian and Gordon (aka King Creosote, Pip Dylan and Beta Band / Aliens member Lone Pigeon respectively), Johnny “The Pictish Trail” Lynch and a host of others have released such a vast catalogue of albums laced with intelligent eccentricity, intense emotion and gentle Scots vernacular that it's hard to know where to start with them.One excellent starting point for the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An expectant audience isn’t the only thing which can be seen from the main stage of Helsinki’s Flow Festival. Janelle Monáe, Manic Street Preachers and OutKast are also greeted by a gas holder looming ominously before them. This brooding remnant of the festival site’s former use as a gasworks brings a unique flavour to Flow. The setting and site are unlike that of any other festival.In its 11th year, Flow 2014 balanced big international names against edgier artists and Finns of all shapes, sizes and styles. With great food, a kid-friendly third day and art installations, the festival is a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
She's never liked labels, but this time round Anja McCloskey’s categorisation as “alternative folk” really seems misleading. Sure, there may still be the prominent use of accordion and her unusual voice, but now the 22-year-old seems only incidentally eccentric. Indeed, the overriding sense from Quincy Who Waits – a dreamy, phantasmagoria of sound – is that the singer from Iowa really just wants to entertain.The album builds on the her debut, An Estimation, whose 19th century central European feel delighted many critics and invited comparisons to The Mummers Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You could be forgiven if the name had slipped off your radar. Neutral Milk Hotel were indie contenders formed in Athens, Georgia back in the day. There were two full-length albums – On Avery Island and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea – in the second half of the Nineties which intrigued a loyal fanbase with crashing chord structures, instruments plucked from a cabinet of curiosities, and opaque lyrics. And then the rest was silence. Frontman Jeff Mangum retreated from the limelight and the band vanished off the map. For 15 years the closest anyone could get to worshipping at the altar was Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
I feel as though most recording artists are missing a trick when it comes to seasonal albums. Although the market for Christmas albums is - as we demonstrate here on theartsdesk annually - a growth one, there are thousands of themes out there waiting to be explored. Easter. Eid. That one Wednesday in July when the weather in Glasgow rivals that of the Med and you can only watch in envy from your office window. For her second album, Finnish singer-songwriter Mirel Wagner has produced something not unlike a Halloween album. Not the Halloween of popular culture, cutesy with cartoon ghouls and Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The cover of her new album, I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, has Sinéad O’Connor sporting a black wig and latex dominatrix dress, a glammed-up guitar wrapped in her arms. Well, at least she made the effort. On stage at the Roundhouse she launched her fine new album sans latex or hair, in black t-shirt and trousers, still the shaven-headed siren of unbidden passions and complicated yearnings.From "Nothing Compares" through to new songs such as the floor-pounding single "Take Me to Church", the lush "Vishnu Room", or the closing Tennessee Williams-referencing "Streetcars" – all of them strong Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Entering Wilderness is like stepping into the brain of Baz Luhrmann. It is a kaleidoscope of colours, swirling with noise and feathers, surreal in its array of vintage-bohemian-steampunk spectacle, and magical in its collaboration of the arts and nature.It is a great big fancy dress party – a chance for the middle-class masses to pour themselves into their finest, most psychedelic unitards and bejeweled headdresses, douse themselves in clouds of glitter, swathe themselves in sequins and get utterly decadent, letting their inner exhibitionist run wild for a weekend. They can watch music and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Morton Valence are a band that have “cult” written all over them, one to be adored by literate sorts and bedsit weirdos (and Plan B, apparently). They’re a five-piece from London who write story-songs that are as poetic as they are mordant and spiced with detail and humour. Their third album is a treat, once again, dealing out tunes with novelistic detail and authorial pith, but since we appear to currently value singer-songwriters who lyrically major in lame mood verbage, who knows whether Morton Valence will gain any more commercial purchase.The album opens with the near eight-minute “The Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Laura Mvula, despite her exotic-sounding name, is a quintessentially British artist. Not just because of where she comes from – Birmingham – but also how she stays humble and understated while dripping with talent. Her story is equally endearing. Mvula was working as a receptionist when her debut, Sing to the Moon, was released. Overnight, her world was turned upside down and over the next year she was nominated for nearly every major award going, taking home two MOBOs and one Urban Music Award.Still, Mvula is not ostensibly an r’n’b or soul artist. Her voice may owe a debt to the gospel she Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Cats on Trees are a roaring success in their native France. The Toulouse-based duo Nina Goern and Yohan Hennequin hit the Top 10 there with this, their eponymous debut album and racked up gold-disc sales. Live, Goern plays piano and sings while Hennequin drums. On record though, things are much grander, with orchestration and a sonorous, stadium-sized production.It follows then that as Goern sings in English, the album is ripe for releasing to the British market. Columbia Records might think Cats on Trees could have the impact of Gallic sensations Daft Punk or Phoenix over here, but it seems Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Front Line – Sounds of RealityA month after The Sex Pistols sighed their last in San Francisco in January 1978, their label boss Richard Branson flew ex-frontman John Lydon and his entourage to Jamaica. Sid Vicious would hurtle towards oblivion while fellow former Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones headed to Brazil to trash their legacy by larking with on-the-lam criminal Ronald Biggs. Lydon’s mission was to scout talent for Branson’s new reggae imprint, the Virgin subsidiary Front Line.Front Line was launched in March 1978. Over its less-than two-year lifespan, it Read more ...