New music
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s been that long since the Gaslight Anthem could be called a punk band with any sort of seriousness that a good half of the crowd at their last round of UK shows would have balked at the notion. But it leaves the critic/fan with something of a dilemma: how to marry a continued love of the band with a loathing for the Killer Kings of Leon-style stadium rockers that recent releases have drawn comparisons to? The answer comes in those throwaway lines of frontman Brian Fallon; the sort that written down look like the worst sort of rock ’n’ roll cliché but which, combined with just the right Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Geoff Dyer’s book on jazz But Beautiful predicted the future of jazz would come from places like North Africa and this is a perfect example. Southern Morocco has become a hothouse of cultural fusion, partly due the number of foreign musicians playing and working with Moroccans at the huge Gnawa and Timitar festivals. This is one of the best attempts and came about after top Brazilian jazz pianist Benjamin Taubkin was asked to appear at the Timitar Festival in Agadir and became fascinated by the local music.The result is not an attempt at a 50/50 split between Morocco and Brazil – you won’t Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Pianist Jerry Léonide arrived on the international jazz scene with a splash when he won the Montreux Jazz Festival solo piano competition last year. Born and raised in Mauritius, then transplanted to France at 17 to further his musical education, Léonide’s musical appeal, reflected here with much larger forces, depends on a refreshing blend of Mauritian melodies, jazzed up with the standards Léonide used to play to tourists at home, then filtered through the more cerebral and contemporary sounds of his French academic training, in the form of the keening blend of soprano sax and flugelhorn. Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Sinéad O’Connor has adopted quite a range of personas over the 30 years or so of her singing career. There was the proto-Riot Grrl of her first album, The Lion and the Cobra; the ballad singer of “Nothing Compares 2 U”; the Irish folkie of Sean-Nos Nua; and the pseudo-Rasta of Throw Down Your Arms. In 2014, she presents herself as a romantic lover, but then obscures this by wading into the “Ban Bossy” debate and calling her new collection I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss. It was originally to be named “The Vishnu Room”, after one of its songs.While O’Connor has turned out many magnificent songs Read more ...
joe.muggs
Just in case anyone thought the hype surrounding Gloucestershire-born Spanish/Jamaican singer FKA Twigs was based only on her unique looks, startling styling and slightly silly videos, this album begins with her voice alone. It too is utterly singular, a choirboy-like chant layered over itself like some New Age confection, before the sci-fi whirrs and booms of "Preface" remind us that we're in the currently hyper-fashionable territory of reconfiguring US R&B through the prism of British soundsystem music post-dubstep and grime.That voice is way upfront in the mix throughout this album. Of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hadda Brooks: Queen of the Boogie and MoreThe rolling piano is irresistible. Upbeat and swinging, it powers forward with an unstoppable momentum. Accompanied by walking double bass and brushed two-step drums, the right hand suddenly peels off a descending cluster of notes while the left pounds out a solid, repetitive rhythm. Although almost rock ‘n’ roll, this is the sound of 1946 and Hadda Brooks’ “Juke Box Boogie”.“Juke Box Boogie” became the opening cut on Brooks' first album, 1948’s modestly titled Queen of the Boogie. Its reissue brings not only an opportunity to revel in and Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Three releases into their career as a duo, the Sydney-based Stone siblings have named an album after themselves. Whether the muse simply couldn’t supply an alternative (several of the tracks, particularly “Main Street” and “Heart Beats Slow” might have communicated more) or new producer Rick Rubin was aiming at a mini relaunch after the pair supposedly split and embarked on solo careers, has not been disclosed.Musically, we’re in the middle of the road, with American folk going one way, rock the other, and the Stones are on the small island between lanes, waiting for the little green man. Read more ...
joe.muggs
Due to summer festival mayhem and a technical glitch or two, June's show is here slightly belatedly - but it's more than worth waiting for as it's an absolute beast of a two-hour spectacular.Peter and Joe are culturally globetrotting as ever, and bring you everything from Philadelphia space-travellers to Shakespeare-repurposing Ukrainian revolutionary cabaret troupes; dreams of Fife to dinner with one of the USA's most important composers; Finnish supermarket-themed indie-rock to ambient Mexican grime. Tune in, turn on and bug out... The Arts Desk 05/06/14 by Meattransmission on Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Volume X is the tenth album by American post-rock originators Trans Am – which could, quite reasonably, encourage listeners to assume that there is nothing new here. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as the band push themselves to reinvent their approach not just for the album as a whole but as each new track unfolds. Despite taking on by turns the likes of industrial trance, hardcore punk thrash, trippy motorik sounds and prog-folk though, Volume X never strays too far from the dancefloor – albeit in a parallel world where lowest common denominator, EDM, is given the short shrift Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It’s not quite true to say no one would have heard of JJ Cale without Eric Clapton. Clapton’s cover of “After Midnight”, released in 1970 as the first single on his debut solo album, put Cale on the map as a songwriter and paved for his own inimitable recording career. But Clapton didn’t actually record “Cocaine” until Slowhand in 1977. In between Lynyrd Skynyrd slipped in with their account of “Call Me the Breeze”, the song which lends its name to this Clapton-led tribute a year on from Cale’s death.Cale was a reticent inspiration to more than Clapton. The major singer-songwriters of a Read more ...
Jonathan Sheridan Jones
After a manic B-road wriggle to avoid traffic that was at a standstill I arrived in glorious sunshine, gazing benignly down on rolling green English fields, complimented by a lake and river. Secret Garden is undoubtedly one of the best settings for a festival I have ever seen. Within its boundaries for four days, 24 hour party people meet in a bubble of Bohemia found, surprisingly, just the other side of Huntingdon. Who’d have thought it?There is an eccentric mix of entertainment, with every taste catered for, much of the action concentrated around a grass bank walkway that starts at The Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
If I had to pick the highlight of this sun-drenched WOMAD it would have to be the fresh, emotionally charged set of Ukrainian band Dakha Brakha. I can’t recall seeing such a unanimously positive response for a relatively unknown band at the Festival. It wasn’t as if the music was obviously crowd-friendly, and parts were quite challenging, mixing soulfully sung Ukrainian folk tunes with other influences – Nigerian drumming, Bulgarian singing and Japanese koto.They call it “ethno-chaos”. As an untypical folk band, their jaunty stovepipe hats are not traditional but do give them an instant Read more ...