New music
peter.quinn
Just occasionally an artist hits the truth of the song in such spectacular fashion that it makes you feel with ever greater intensity what it means to be human. Last night, vocalist Sheila Jordan's performance of the Jimmy Webb standard, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, a song she recorded on her 1999 album Jazz Child, achieved exactly that: a shatteringly personal account, bookended by an improvisation on a native American theme, both the pathos and power of the song were extraordinary. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was wiping away tears.With a career that stretches back to the 1940s and Read more ...
joe.muggs
Well that's a shame. Little Mix were likable, talented winners of The X Factor – four times Everygirl in clashing neon, funky, funny, vulnerable but self aware. They proved repeatedly on the show that they could sing and then some, and even though they were a thrown-together group harmonised like they were sisters. Their most memorable turn, doing En Vogue's “Don't Let Go”, perfectly caught the beginning of the current wave of nostalgia for the great 1990s R&B girl groups, and when they won it felt like they could be an actual characterful pop band in the way the Sugababes and Girls Aloud Read more ...
Louise Gray
In 1991, the Basque performance artist Esther Ferrar wrote a letter to modern music’s inventive genius, John Cage, on the future of anarchism. Ferrar’s letter – written in the year before Cage died – was in fact a reply to a question about anarchy’s prospects that the composer had thrown out to the wider world (typically, in the form of mesostic poem called “Overpopulation and Art”), and it’s true to say – as this last event in the short Cage Rattling season made clear, that two streams of anarchy were being addressed: on the one hand, the unfettered possibilities flowing from Cage’s chance Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It has a cracking cover, Example’s new album. Look at it above. A boy by a lake stretching his hands skywards, emanating untrammelled childhood freedom, contrasted with a festival crowd, innocence long gone, roaring for more. Example appears to be positing his conflicted status. It works well as a metaphor and the album covers the same territory.This is London pop rapper Elliot “Example” Gleave’s confessional fourth album, a loose concept piece where many songs are raw pleas, reeking of rehab speak. In essence, he bitterly regrets and abhors the way he let his idealised former girlfriend down Read more ...
joe.muggs
At the beginning of last night's show, Herbie Hancock looked like he was going to perform with the dignity and serenity befitting a 72-year-old with some 50 years playing experience. The improvisation that launched from a base of Wayne Shorter's “Footprints” was elegant, charming, tasteful and often very beautiful. The synthetic instrumental loops that he triggered via a couple of iPads mounted on his grand piano as backing were unobtrusive to begin with and had a delightfully loose groove.Hancock's playing over some 15 minutes of that piece ran through a meandering narrative that took in Read more ...
peter.quinn
For the way it combined mercurial, on-the-fly interplay, seismic textural shifts and listening of the highest order, this gig was remarkable. In the space of two continuous sets there wasn't a longueur to be found, such was the incredible union of Black Top #5's boundary-pushing improv and fine-tuned musicianship.Saxophonist Steve Williamson, trumpeter Byron Wallen and vocalist Cleveland Watkiss joined Black Top founders, pianist Pat Thomas and vibist/sampler Orphy Robinson, to explore the intersection of live instruments and the technology of dub, reggae and dance floor.You would search in Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Britain has a grudging relationship with country music – we’ve never produced a successful country singer (although the likes of guitarist Albert Lee and several songwriters have prospered in Nashville) and our love for the likes of Johnny Cash is tempered by a contempt for much of what is marketed as country music. I’m often surprised by how blues, soul and jazz lovers can admit ignorance of a musical form so closely related to other American genres.That this weekend found two major US country stars performing in London – one male and comfortable as a Nashville mainstream icon, the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You can tell by all the important upper case that the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic Games were the shows to be seen emoting at. Emeli Sandé can make the unique boast that she performed on both bills. That’s quite a badge of honour for a musician whose debut album Our Version of Events was released only in February, and whose songwriting career has been at least as much about supplying hits to talent-show graduates. Last night’s full house at the Albert Hall – she’s also in Manchester this evening – will have been drawn by admiration for the voice and the songs, but Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s nigh on impossible to separate One Direction’s music from their horrid, grinny, showbiz persona or their gigantic success representing Palpatine Cowell’s Syco empire. This is especially the case if you’re a 45 year old music journalist rather than a 13 year old girl whose hormonal development has exploded through staring at posters of smouldering Zayn Malik (the sultry one!). One Direction are no more aimed at me – and quite possibly you if you’re over 16 - than is a day spent watching CBBC.That said, there are obvious benchmark musical comparisons to be made, notably with their boy band Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The moody lights and the smoke make it look like Melody Gardot is emerging from the swamp, probably somewhere near New Orleans, as she begins her set singing a capella. Her walking stick and shades (the result of a bad accident in 2003) only add to the initial feeling that she is the spiritual heir, if not the actual misbegotten daughter of a figure like Dr John, the Night Tripper. As an ex-fashion student, she oozes style, no bad thing in a jazz world that often equates scruffiness with authenticity.With a first rate band joining her on stage, directed by drummer Chuck Staab and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s been a bumper year for fans of Public Image Ltd. John Lydon took his new version of the band out on the road and issued the This is PiL album. His former PiL colleagues Jah Wobble and Keith Levene reworked the landmark 1979 PiL album Metal Box live, as Metal Box in Dub. Now, the duo have re-cemented their relationship with Yin & Yang, their first new work together since co-writing Gary Clail’s “Beef (How Low Can You Go?)” in 1990.The motives for these reunions and restatements of ownership are rendered moot by the forceful, and sometimes perplexing, Yin & Yang, an album which Read more ...
theartsdesk
Bill Withers: The Complete Sussex and Columbia AlbumsKieron TylerThis box set is several cuts above the usual major-label, no-frills cheapo collection gathering together a selection of an artist’s albums. Produced with evident care, it’s a superb tribute to a distinctive soul great. The clam-shell box contains Withers’ nine albums, originally issued between 1971 and 1985. Each disc comes in a card reproduction of the original album sleeve, even including a facsimile of the fold-out triptych cover to 1972’s Still Bill. Liner notes, annotation and a brief, newly written introduction from Read more ...