New music
Thomas H. Green
“That’s the sad thing today,” said Martin Gore of Depeche Mode in the Guardian last Friday, “Most people who get involved in music are so normal. It’s supposed to be full of weirdos.” What’s great about the Flaming Lips, whatever your opinion of the sound they make, is that they are a major league indie-rock band who truly are weirdos.Led by the maverick Wayne Coyne, renowned for wandering across his audiences in a giant transparent bubble, they are both imaginative and unpredictable. Unlike so many bands who simply adopt psychedelia as a sonic style, they understand the psychedelic mindset, Read more ...
Rob Copsey
Those who have seen the music video that accompanies NKOTB’s new single “Remix (I Like The)” may be shocked to learn they own a wicked sense of humour. The clip itself sees an unassuming fan - played by “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” actress Artemis Pebdani - strutting her stuff a little too exuberantly at a pool party. While it’s a brilliantly self-aware nod to the now mature groupies they’ve no doubt encountered on their recent world tour with the Backstreet Boys, the song itself is a perky slice of dance-pop that sounds - whisper it - surprisingly fresh.Unfortunately, it’s also a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Among the artists Aly Spaltro, the 23-year-old who makes music as Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, calls to mind is Laura Marling. The whispery vocals of the youthful English folk singer may not seem like the most obvious reference point for Spaltro’s guttural, animalistic howl but bear with me: like Marling’s, Spaltro’s vocals are heavy with a wisdom far beyond her years and, much like Marling’s, the subject matter of Spaltro’s songs is often deeply horrific.Ripely Pine is a debut album four years in the making, but has lost none of its rawness for that. It opens in contemplative mode; Spaltro part- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Cold War Kids remain all mixed up. The Californian band appeared in 2006 bearing tasty blues-rock indie that leapt about in the same places Jack White hangs out. There was lots of media blather about their being a Christian band since most of them had met at the private Christian college, Biola University. Then it turned out they had much more complex and conflicted theological perspectives than were easy to sum up in music mag pull-quotes.Their first two albums were lively, punchy efforts in the blues-indie vein but on their last one, Mine is Yours, they appeared to be strugging to find Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Long before Amy Winehouse, there was a north London retro soul'n'jazz girl with a beehive hairdo making inroads into the Top 40. However, after a short run of hits in the early Eighties Mari Wilson never achieved the epic popularity of her dark-haired successor. Thus we find her in a Brighton basement playing a cruise ship set to a chicken-in-a-basket audience.The Komedia is laid out Vegas cabaret-style, all tables, wine bottles clinking and late middle-aged couples of all sexualities tucking into deep fried calamari, burgers, lasagne and, of course, chicken. Wilson’s show is gentle, designed Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Mark Hamilton, with his bushy beard and plaid shirts, looks like he might be the singer with indie hipsters Grizzly Bear. In fact he is Woodpigeon - an act with a similar sound, but whom some consider a little more twee. But, in truth, although Hamilton and friends can sound quite light, there are very few albums anywhere that can match the pastoral beauty of Woodpigeon’s first three releases. On Thumbtacks and Glue, however, the introspective Canadian seems to have decided that prettiness is not enough.Much of the album was written deep in the plains of Saskatchewan, where Hamilton travelled Read more ...
bruce.dessau
"Noel. Noel." Damon Albarn had to shout twice before Noel Gallagher joined him onstage to strum his guitar during Blur's neo-bluesy "Tender". Maybe Albarn's former Britpop rival wanted their historic musical union to take just a little bit longer. Maybe he wanted Albarn to wait just to assert himself. Or maybe after all these years of standing between very loud bands and very loud audiences he is a little deaf. But it happened. At around 8.30pm on Saturday March 23 the Britpop War was officially over. Churchill and Stalin at Yalta was maybe a more significant alliance, but only just.Albarn Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Stephen Stills: Carry OnSprawling across these four discs is the curious saga of the megastar who fell to earth. From early 1967, when Stephen Stills's song "For What It's Worth" became a Top 10 hit for LA folk-rockers Buffalo Springfield, to 1973's Down the Road, the second and final album with his band Manassas, Stills was leading the charge at the white-hot edge of the rock revolution. But after that his stock plummeted, his albums falling lower and lower in the charts as his imperious aura dwindled bewilderingly. He last appeared on Billboard's Top 200 when his 1984 disc Right Read more ...
peter.quinn
Suddenly, it's raining Duke Ellington homages. Stateside, there's Terri Lyne Carrington's Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, a brilliant reimagining of Ellington's classic 1963 trio recording with Charles Mingus and Max Roach that recently hit the top spot on the JazzWeek radio chart. Here in the UK, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra's latest release In the Spirit of Duke – recorded on tour during October 2012 – features an all-Duke programme which captures the Ellington Orchestra sound down to the tiniest detail. This evening at the QEH, the Nu Civilisation Orchestra joins the Read more ...
garth.cartwright
I've been to countless UK Womads yet have never before made it WOMAD Taranaki. Which is almost something to be ashamed about considering I'm a Kiwi. But this expat is never in the South Pacific mid-March. Until, that is, this year. The 11th New Zealand Womad is held in the small city of New Plymouth in Taranaki, a gorgeous West Coast hump in the central North Island. Mt Taranaki towers over the site - this beautiful mountain is often used as double for Mt Fuji, so sublime is its symmetery - and surfing beaches are 20 minutes walk away. The site - the Brooklands Bowl - is a vast park full of Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Sympathy vote time is over. After Edwyn Collins suffered two cerebral haemorrhages in 2005 his comeback album, 2007’s Losing Sleep, was greeted with ecstatic reviews. It was a certainly pretty good, but maybe critics, being the old softies we are at heart, were slightly swayed by our unbridled joy at the fact that the former Orange Juice frontman was simply back in the game. So the new album, Understated, is the real test of whether Collins can still cut the musical mustard.The verdict was hardly ever in doubt. From the opening Northern Soul stomp of "Dilemma" to the unashamedly sentimental Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Nick Rhodes (b 1962) is a founding member of the group Duran Duran. Their synthesizer player and driving force, he is the sole member to have been in every incarnation of the band. Duran Duran started in Birmingham in 1978 when Rhodes was only 16, a post-punk synth-pop act indebted to Roxy Music and David Bowie. The other members were singer Simon le Bon, bassist John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor, and guitarist Andy Taylor, although Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy was frontman for the first year of their existence.Duran Duran became known as leaders of the New Romantic movement, famed for their Read more ...