Back in the Eighties fans of Fish (of Marillion) considered his groovy wordbending to be art. Others begged to differ. Lloyd Cole and Atzec Camera-types would rubbish him as a slightly preposterous merchant of sixth-form poetry. Perhaps both had a point. Mk 1 Marillion certainly could be pretentious, but they also, undeniably, had some killer lines. "On promenades where drunks propose/ to lonely arcade mannequins" is, for me, a suburban evocation worthy of Richard Thompson. A Feast of Consequences - finally on general release – is Fish’s 10th post-Marillion studio album. On forums Read more ...

 “What Goes On”, opening track of Pixies first album since 1991’s Trompe Le Monde, proves a suitably thrilling beginning for a set that has been much anticipated by fans who may have been concerned that Black Francis’ crew were happy as a heritage act. The chugger-chugger rhythm combines with plenty of volume and feedback and suggests a band that isn’t just going through the motions. This should cause massed sighs of relief to those who haven’t heard these songs over the three EPs and a download that were released over the last few months.When Pixies first appeared in the late 1980s, Read more ...

She may only be 23, but Iggy Azalea got off to a good start with those of us a good decade older last month when the video accompanying her single “Fancy” - an homage to 90s teen comedy Clueless  - debuted online. Nostalgia sells, of course: any idiot with access to the nightwear department at Primark, where right now pyjamas featuring Alicia Silverstone and the rest share shelf space with My Little Pony, could tell you that. But fans of the film will know that its imagery, if not its heart, is the perfect accompaniment to the stylish swagger the Australian rapper brings to the verses, Read more ...

From the balcony overlooking the mosh pit you get a good idea of how long a band has been going. Last night at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, The Men They Couldn’t Hang celebrated their 30th anniversary while a small kinetic cluster of mainly bald 50-year-olds pinged into one another like shiny billiard balls. A fiver says a sheepish accountant or two will have had some explaining to do this morning in A&E.The Men could and should have been contenders. For the second half of the Eighties, they were. Forged in the crucible of Thatcherism, they quickly established themselves as England’s Read more ...

Krai – Край – is employed in Russia to label tracts of land separating regions or marking borders. These liminal places each have their own name, defined limits and character, and have inspired the second solo album by the Brooklyn-based Olga Bell. An exotic musical travelogue through the nine Krais, Krai the album is delivered entirely in Russian.The music shifts from minimally arranged pieces drawing from Troika to melodies which could suit the balalaika. Orthodox religious chanting sits alongside Cossack melodies and the drumming of the Arctic-region Chuchki. There’s electronics, Read more ...

 John Tavener: The Protecting VeilIn its tribute to John Tavener which followed his death last November, theartsdesk acknowledged the difficulties his devotional music brought. David Nice asked “what was there here that I couldn’t get from a standard traditional service?” He continued to describe The Protecting Veil as a masterpiece which “certainly cast its spell.” The tribute also included a fond and frank reminiscence from cellist Steven Isserlis, for whom The Protecting Veil was composed. Tavener was “was complicated," he said, "and could be very difficult.”This reissue of the Read more ...

British brothers Simon and Robin Lee – AKA Faze Action - have been bubbling under the radar for a couple of decades. There was a point in the late Nineties when the disco-powered duo were poised to break through as the super-hip Nuphonic label’s signature act. But this was in the days before Daft Punk, multiple Norwegians and your Aunt Mildred had rediscovered, reinvigorated and reinvented disco. In some alternate universe Faze Action invaded the charts from the disco-house underground circa 1996, while the Disclosure siblings were still busy watching Clifford the Big Red Dog, sat in their Read more ...

“You’re great listeners. You have surrendered your ears.” The reverent hush that descended for two hours on the Festival Hall is a new sort of sound at a Christy Moore concert. There was a time when such a gathering would bristle with fervour. Twenty years ago, if not of Irish descent, you could feel distinctly like the odd one out. Things have changed, for any number of factors: the peace dividend in Ulster, the ever-diluting Celtic DNA of the Irish diaspora, while the senior sections of Moore’s audience – and pensioners abounded last night – have grown older and less raucous with him.But Read more ...

I'm starting to get irritated that the term “indietronica” steadfastly refuses to catch on. We live in a world now where Hot Chip, Metronomy, Fujiya & Miyagi, tUnE-yArDs, M83 and on and on and on are as much the norm in just-left-of-centre music as any kind of guitar-centric bands. It's not dance music, it's not particularly avant garde, it's got nice songs and interesting, vulnerable lyrics: it's indie, but electronic. It's indietronica, surely? But no, the years tick by, and this whole area remains essentially unnamed.Anyway. Phil Kay – not the under-rated stoner Scottish comedian, but Read more ...

It’s hard not to admire Kelis Rogers’ spirited and unpredictable approach to the music business. She’s been through multiple incarnations, approaching them with real zest, the spiritual successor to Nena Cherry, albeit more prolific and emanating a very American hip hop raunch. At her career’s start she explored the shouty borderland where R&B meets rock; in “Milkshake” she created one of the sexiest, starkest, best R&B numbers of the century, yet her last album was produced with EDM-pop Satan, David Guetta. Even outside her music, there’s always some new enthusiasm. The only time I Read more ...

Drummer Billy Cobham has been an innovative and influential figure since the 1960s across jazz, Latin, funk and the areas of fusion between. He has played with Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Randy and Michael Brecker, and in 1971 was a founder-member of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, widely considered to have been the greatest jazz-rock fusion group of all. The sensitivity and thoroughness with which the drumming was integrated into the Mahavishnu Orchestra ensemble, and Cobham’s management of the new and unbalanced rhythms and structures of that orchestra is usually considered to have Read more ...

The ease with which Wallis Bird can flit between genres armed with nothing but a guitar and her warm, raggedly bluesy voice has been apparent since at the very least her 2012 self-titled third album. Even still, those of us who fell for that album’s considerable charms could hardly have expected its architect to celebrate a move to Berlin by going full-on Eurodisco.It’s an acquired taste, the throbbingly incessant disco beat that punctuates “Hardly Hardly”, the opening track - and first single - from Architect from about four bars in, but the multiple Irish Meteor winner Bird has never been Read more ...