New music
joe.muggs
A quiet revolution has been underway over the last 10 or 15 years. As digital synthesis becomes more and more available and powerful, as does the ability to manipulate the sound of real wood-and-metal instruments inside a computer, so the boundaries between “electronic” and “organic” have been eroded to the point where they are now meaningless.While some of the artists doing that have been those who parade their technological nous – the Autechres and Flying Lotuses of this world, as well as more academic experimenters – a lot of innovation in this area has been taking place in the less Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The pared-down beauty and integrity of this remarkable new album is all the more exciting given the quantity of stylistic clutter typically associated with its two principal genres, jazz and soul. Showing excellent taste and artistic self-confidence, McFarlane has stripped away warbling vocal ornaments, stale generic phrasing and redundant backing tracks, trusting the assured, true-grained timbre of her voice to carry the emotional weight of her potent and original writing.A handful of these songs are surely destined to endure in the repertoire. They balance McFarlane’s exposed voice and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Dory Langdon: My Heart is a HunterAs a singer-songwriter, Dory Previn’s reputation rests on the extraordinary quartet of albums she made for United Artists in the opening years of the Seventies. This, her debut album, was issued in 1958. Commenting on his reaction to hearing “The Lady With The Braid” from 1971’s Mythical Kings & Iguanas for the first time, Jarvis Cocker said “I remember very vividly first hearing this record. I had moved to London. I was living in this squat and I was trying to put a curtain rail up. I was listening to the radio and it’s one of those moments where Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
What is the point of Sheryl Crow? She’s been around for decades but to what purpose? What makes her art worthwhile? She seems a liberal sort, does good things for decent causes, keeps interesting company, but everything she touches turns to US FM radio easy. She likes the smell of rock’n’roll but never looks to have mired herself in it which, making the kind of music she does, country-tinged blues-rock, rather misses the point. She’s a nice, pretty, all-American cheerleader who’s ended up centre stage via hard work, networking and shopping mall anthems such as “All I Wanna Do” and, God help Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The best thing about Warpaint is their rhythm section. The all-female LA quartet have received critical plaudits for both their albums, wisely releasing their latest eponymous collection in the dead zone of January, maximizing media attention (why don’t more bands do this? It was the making of the Scissor Sisters back in 2004). The foursome are determinedly un-showbiz, letting their music do the talking and dealing in tasty power-femme sound-bites. In this they are admirable but their music, a woozy amalgam of the Cocteau Twins and grunge, lacks actual songs (although there are three catchy Read more ...
peter.quinn
Featuring two of the most celebrated bands in traditional Irish music, this mouth-watering double bill as part of the ninth Temple Bar TradFest drew a capacity crowd to St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. With incredibly tight tune playing, pinpoint phrasing and a powerhouse backing section, Frankie Gavin & De Dannan kicked things off in dramatic fashion. By the time fiddle player Gavin launched into “The Wild Irishman”, his impressive bow work was sending clouds of rosin flying off in all directions. The second set of tunes, three barndances (including the great “Lucy Farr's”) plus another Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Croz is everything a David Crosby album should be. That’s not to say it’s the sound of laurels being rested on or evidence of an artist coasting and returning to default settings. Rather, that instead it’s a statement of who this man is and why he is unique. The album – his first solo outing in 20 years – is crammed with jazzy arrangements and melodic shifts. The warm yet spare instrumentation is sympathetic and instantly identifiable as Crosby’s. The lyrics, observational and personalised, are never predictable. And his voice, still bell-like and pure, is as seductive as it has ever been. Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Warpaint, the all-female four-piece band from Los Angeles, introduced themselves to the UK in 2010, with the release of their debut album, The Fool. While not the most dynamic set of tunes, there was spirit and atmosphere, and the song-writing talents of Theresa Wayman and Emily Kokal generated fans in both the music and mainstream press. The band was even nominated for the BBC’s Sound of 2011 award after “Shadows” received plenty of airplay on Radio 1.The eponymous second album takes a different tack, with many of the songs apparently being written by the whole band through jamming and Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The musical concept behind this constellation of international stars at Ronnie Scott’s last night was simple. Take a sextet of some of the world’s finest improvising jazz musicians, give them either a funky groove, gentle swing or a bass-fired post-bop beat, and ample space to improvise. Sit back and enjoy the sonic fireworks.Russian alto saxist Zhenya Strigalev is only half a dozen years out of music college, but has already played extensively in three cities, moving to London from St. Petersburg to study, then on again to New York in 2010, where he recruited most of Smiling Organizm. He’s Read more ...
joe.muggs
In a world where everyone is expected to be a “brand”, Gilles Peterson sets some very interesting precedents. Probably best known as a radio DJ – currently on BBC 6 Music, plus his globally syndicated Worldwide show – he also remains as in demand to play in clubs as at any time in his 25-year career, he runs the Brownswood label, and has his own Worldwide Festival, currently with winter and summer editions in different locations in France plus four years running in Singapore and one in Shanghai. And somehow his individual personality remains at the heart of all of this.His annual award show Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Damien Jurado last surfaced as one of Moby’s collaborators on the Innocents album. From the sound of Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, Beck might have been a more logical musical partner. Texture-wise, Jurado’s new release sits alongside Sea Change-era Beck as well as the dense, fuggy atmosphere of his own last outing, 2012’s Maraqopa.Like that album, Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son is produced by Richard Swift. He has become integral to helping Jurado move from the lo-fi folkie he was characterised as to becoming an auteur breaching musical barriers. The songs are lyrically Read more ...
mark.kidel
Ed Harcourt – with his vulnerable tenor vocals – treads the knife-edge between melancholy and self-indulgence, romantic yearning and comfort-zone sentimentality. At his best, he delivers literate songwriting, with poetic imagery that is inspired and imaginative rather than contrived. At his weakest, the sombre colours of his emotional palette and the meandering introspection grow wearisome, and soon grate.His new mini-album, mercifully concise (at 28 minutes) in this time of digital ramblings that far exceed the useful rigours imposed by last century’s LPs, is billed as a stab at Read more ...