New music
Album: Harp - AlbionMonday, 27 November 2023
After leaving Midlake while recording their fourth album, Tim Smith said he was pursuing music under the name Harp. That was in 2012. Smith had been the Denton, Texas-based band’s singer and main songwriter. Without him, Midlake pushed on and issued... Read more... |
This Is The Kit, Barbican review - familiarity and charmSunday, 26 November 2023
Coming at the end of a long year’s gigging, This Is The Kit’s performance at the Barbican on Saturday night was an excellent demonstration of the whole band’s familial, compelling musicianship.Support came from The Raincoats’ Gina Birch (and friends... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic CabaretSunday, 26 November 2023
"Both of us have always enjoyed listening to dance music, and we wanted to interpret disco in our own way. We wanted to make good quality soulful electronic dance music, more biting than the usual bland disco stuff. We wanted to make records that... Read more... |
Album: Catrin Finch & Aoife Ni Bhriain - Double YouSaturday, 25 November 2023
Two weeks ago, Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Irish fiddler, violinist and Hardanger fiddle player Aoife Ni Bhriain entranced their audience at the Union Chapel in North London, playing from their new album, Double You, as part of the London Jazz... Read more... |
Album: Take That - This LifeFriday, 24 November 2023
Listening to the best of what they’ve created since their post-2005 reformation, it would take a staunch anti-Take That churl to hold fast to the punk-rockin’ claim the “man band” are, musically, just talentless piffle. “Shine”, “Patience”, “Hey Boy... Read more... |
Album: Joe Jackson - Joe Jackson Presents Max Champion in What a Racket!Thursday, 23 November 2023
Lord love a duck, Elsie, music ’all’s ’avin a bleedin’, whatchamacallit, comeback, innit? The release of Joe Jackson’s 19th studio album Joe Jackson Presents Max Champion in What a Racket! a week after Madness’s Theatre of the Absurd... Read more... |
Nikki Iles featuring the NDR Bigband, EFG London Jazz Festival, Cadogan Hall review - boundless artistry in harmonyWednesday, 22 November 2023
When a musical jeweller with an imagination of remarkable aural refinement meets a jazz orchestra which combines playing of super-fine precision and warmth with a total commitment to the music’s singular ebb and flow, remarkable things can happen.In... Read more... |
Greta Van Fleet, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - all rock and very little rollWednesday, 22 November 2023
If nothing else, you couldn’t accuse Greta Van Fleet of short-changing fans when it came to costumes or pyro. It felt like every few minutes the Michigan throwback rockers frontman Josh Kiszka was disappearing offstage, only to reappear in a variety... Read more... |
Album: Abigail Lapell - LullabiesWednesday, 22 November 2023
Abigail Lapell is a singer feted and given awards in her homeland of Canada, but who has yet to reach far outside it. Folk is her metier but only insofar as it’s Joni Mitchell’s.Five albums into her career, inspired by COVID lockdown-induced... Read more... |
EFG London Jazz Festival 2023 round-up review - vital sparks crossing and uniting generationsTuesday, 21 November 2023
Start with the biggest gig of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival: Angélique Kidjo’s Royal Albert Hall show definitely stays in the mind. Part of the story is the earth-shaking power and resonance of the voice of the "Queen of African music" which... Read more... |
Eurythmics Songbook Featuring Dave Stewart, London Palladium review - Annie Lennox would be proudMonday, 20 November 2023
Well, wow. Just wow. At a time when there are fewer and fewer people I’m desperate to see live and so many of them are then disappointing, the celebration by Dave Stewart and friends of the Eurythmics catalogue, 40 years – 40 years! – after “... Read more... |
Album: Kurt Vile - Back to Moon BeachMonday, 20 November 2023
Back to Moon Beach is a collection of new, reworked and covered songs that feels like a gift from Kurt Vile for his fans to dissect. He jokingly refers to the EP, which is just under an hour long, as “a KV comp”, an appropriate description given the... Read more... |
