New music
Russ Coffey
M.I.A’s recent single “Bad Girls” - a post-modern mix of Bhangra beats, and frustrated vocals - undeniably shows her at her most effective. It's an example of her unique take on culture and society that's long garnered critical praise. And yet, there is also a kind of empty stare in her music that others feel demonstrates a deep-down naïveté; or worse. In other words, no one really doubts that, musically, M.I.A can often brew up a pretty toxic potion, but is it real subversion or merely trendy posturing?Matangi contains both. The strongest tracks are psychotic dance-punk poems to the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
William Onyeabor: World Psychedelic Classics 5 – Who is William Onyeabor?A primitive drum machine rattles out a Latin rhythm. Keyboards begin. The gaps between the repetitive spirals of notes are plugged by blobs of fat synth. A disembodied yet warm voice sings “Good name is better than silver and gold. And no money, no money, no money, no money can buy good name.” The melody nods towards Kraftwerk’s “Computer World”. The music is as intense as early Marshall Jefferson and the whole suggests Tom Tom Club.William Onyeabor's “Good Name” is compelling and electrifying: minimal and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s a condition of certain music journalists – myself very much included – that we can be blindsided by originality to the detriment of much else. Thus I might rate a chunk of electronic weirdness that blows my mind on the first couple of listens over a more derivative piece of song-writing. Later on I sometimes find that the sonic weirdness wears thin, sucked dry of its original sparkle, while the more derivative music slowly reveals itself as something rather brilliant.I admit, then, that when I first caught up with Deap Vally, a female L.A. two-piece, one on electric guitar, the other on Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s taken Avril Lavigne more than a decade to release a self-titled album, but in some ways it’s appropriate: after all, the Canadian singer’s best music still sounds exactly like what she was releasing as a teenager. The difference is that when she first burst onto the scene, all sweatbands and heavy eyeliner, Lavigne was a breath of fresh air - but now, on her new album, she seems to be taking her cues from the women she blazed the trail for.What she ends up with is the fun pop hits Katy Perry didn’t have room for in her spiritual new direction (“Sippin’ on Sunshine”, “Rock ‘n’ Roll”); Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Suede, lest we forget, exploded into a moribund music scene dominated by the fag-end of grunge in 1992. Initially cast as the John the Baptists of Britpop, they lost Bernard Butler, their wunderkind guitarist, early on, became as known for druggy indulgence as for albums that were incrementally dropping in quality, and spilt up in 2003. Vocalist Brett Anderson claimed he needed “to do whatever it takes to get my demon back”. Solo albums followed; as did The Tears (a collaboration between Anderson and Butler) and now Suede return (still without Butler), touring properly after a few show-cases Read more ...
joe.muggs
Oh dear, there it is – the career-plateau pot-shot at “journalists” and “critics”. It comes about halfway through the album, on the otherwise really good 1970s blues-rock-sampling “Looking Down the Barrel”, and it cements a sad feeling that's been growing throughout the record that here is an artist who's achieved some success and now has nothing to talk about except what it's like to be an artist who's achieved some success.See, the problem is not the pot-shot, but the fact that Tinie Tempah needs to make it. Having achieved big-time pay-day and proved his talent, he should be cutting loose Read more ...
graeme.thomson
In February 2010 I spoke to Lou Reed about his return to Metal Machine Music, a typically incongruous endeavour. Not content with touring his "difficult" 1973 suicide-song-cycle Berlin in 2008, he had decided to re-release his notorious 1975 "guitar symphony" and take his Metal Machine Trio on the road to perform entirely improvised instrumental music inspired by the spirit of the original album.Metal Machine Music was the moment when it was widely agreed that Reed lost the thread of an already meandering plot. Four sides of treated, vari-speeded guitar feedback recorded in his apartment, he Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Many bands would pack it in after the departure of their lead singer, especially if he was their main songwriter. In Midlake’s case, the damage was compounded by Tim Smith leaving after work had begun on the band’s fourth album. Antiphon is what it became, and it’s not what had been started with Smith. One track aside, they began afresh with guitarist Eric Pulido stepping up to fill the gap.Nonetheless, Antiphon is recognisably a Midlake album, albeit one more languorous and soft-focus than ever before. The traces of folk, Americana and Neil Young which surfaced from time to time have largely Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
One of the joys of the Southbank Centre’s year-long The Rest Is Noise series has been the opportunity to hear some unusual period pieces among the more standard repertoire. In the case of 200 Motels it is a concert premiere for a genre-bending work which was pulled from its 1971 Albert Hall slot due to complaints about its obscene content.The piece began life as the score to a film co-written and directed by Zappa and Tony Palmer. Described as a "surrealistic documentary" about life on the road, the film itself feels like a museum piece and is, with the best will in the world, borderline Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Norway is currently attracting an uncommon degree of attention due to the absurd “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” by Ylvis, the comedy duo Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker. The country’s mainstream music hasn’t been this newsworthy since a-ha conquered the world in 1985. After 150 million YouTube hits for “The Fox”, the figure is still rising.The Ylvisåker brothers host the television chat show I kveld med Ylvis and the catchy musical novelty was meant for a sketch in the programme. It was intended to be the worst song ever. Ylvis had, though, roped in Stargate, the New York-based Norwegian Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
We had heard he was ill, and had a recent liver transplant, but then he always seemed to be off colour. When Lester Bangs interviewed him in 1973 for Let It Rock he seemed ill then. When Bangs met him he had just had his greatest hit album Transformer, and seemed to be immediately blowing his new-found fame. Bangs talked of a “vaguely unpleasant fat man” who said "I can create a vibe without saying anything, just by being in the room." But if rock music from the time of Elvis’ first records was a religion with Elvis a Messiah, Lou Reed became a High Priest. In the late sixties, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Oh Yes We Can Love – A History of Glam Rock Despite Marc Bolan fashioning glam rock’s starting block in 1971 with T. Rex’s “Hot Love”, 2013 has been the year when pop's era of androgyny, inappropriate and shiny trousers, and stomping, sometimes arty music has been marked. The 40th anniversary passed largely unmarked, but the 42nd saw Tate Liverpool mount the Glam! The Performance of Style exhibition. Now, this confounding five-disc box set – the first to tackle glam – has arrived to tell the story too.The choice of 1973 as a marker makes some sense: it was the year Read more ...