New music
Kathryn Reilly
Indie national treasure Nadine Shah is back, which is excellent news. Not least because it might not have happened. She lands, this time, with extra baggage – divorce, rehab, death and near-death flavour this, her fifth album. It’s not an easy listen but it’s certainly a visceral and moving one.In the three years since the release of Kitchen Sink, a lot has changed in the music scene, particularly around women (see Self Esteem). Does she still have a place? Abso-bloody-lutely. Beguiling opener “Even Light” demonstrates her new higher register and the way she’s stretching her magnificent Read more ...
Sarah Kent
At last Yoko Ono is being acknowledged in Britain as a major avant garde artist in her own right. It has been a long wait; last year was her 90th birthday! The problem, of course, was her relationship with John Lennon and perceptions of her as the Japanese weirdo who broke up the Beatles and led Lennon astray – down a crooked path to oddball, hippy happenings.Most notorious were the Bed-ins which the couple staged in the late 1960s as a protest against the Vietnam war. At the heart of Tate Modern’s exhibition is the 1969 film BED PEACE in which we see the couple advocating peace from hotel Read more ...
joe.muggs
Paloma Faith is pretty much the dictionary definition of “full-on”. Always in elaborate hairdos and outré ruffles, big of personality and big of voice, she enthuses and emotes with firehose intensity at any opportunity. So it comes as no surprise that her big breakup album doesn’t pull any punches. Like, really: this is a record which features at its most climactic point, a song called “Eat Shit and Die.”That song – a big production number soul shoutalong which practically demands a Busby Berkley style visual with a cast of hundreds plus fireworks and fountains – is actually a bucketload of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Whitney Houston once sang that “the greatest love of all is happening to me-ee-eee.” In 2024, however, the greatest love of all, at least in terms of sheer, outward-expanding volume, is happening to Jennifer Lopez (and, one must presume, Ben Affleck). J-Lo has spent, we are told, $20 million of her own money on a triple-headed monument to the rekindling of her romance with Affleck; a (from the trailer, very camp-looking) feature film, a documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, inspired by letters from Affleck, and this album. The sheer chutzpah is impressive, and the album sometimes Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A decade ago Canadian duo Chromeo had their biggest success with the single “Jealous (I Ain’t With It)” and its parent album, White Women. However, it didn’t presage a move into the mainstream.For over 20 years, Chromeo’s wry-sexy, wordy electro-funk has been more hipster than populist. Their magnificent 2009 appearance, endorsing handwashing, on eye-boggling kids TV programme Yo Gabba Gabba sums up their playful ethos (check YouTube!). Then again, the same could said of their more recent COVID-era Quarantine Casanova EP. They were into all that Random Access Memories schtick before Daft Punk Read more ...
Guy Oddy
This year marks ten years since Les Amazones d’Afrique first came together in Mali under the guidance of those giants of African pop, Mamani Keȋta, Oumou Sangare and Mariam Doumbia. It also sees the release of their third album, Musow Danse – but things are hardly business as usual, instead building ever higher on their infectious sound.Alongside the familiar voices of Mamani Keȋta, Fafa Ruffino and Kandy Guira, this new set of tunes sees the feminist collective welcome aboard new members Nneka, Alvie Bitemo and Dobet Gnahoré, as well as the production talents of Jacknife Lee. This doesn’t Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The album opens with “In my Head.” The lead instrument is an electric piano, over which a quavering, clenched voice sings. The closest comparison is Pearls Before Swine’s Tom Rapp, a similarly idiosyncratic singer. As the stately song unfolds, stabbing strings complement interjections from a soul-styled brass section.Melodically, “In my Head” has a resemblance to “Piece of My Heart," which Erma Franklin issued as single in 1967 and Janis Joplin thenceforth made her own. The intimations of soul music point to one aspect of where South Atlantic Blues is coming from, but Scott Fagan’s first Read more ...
Katie Colombus
There are few ways of describing the music of The Dead South – progressive bluegrass is my favourite because it's so meaningless to so many. By which I mean it doesn't matter what the genre, it's just good music, and that's all you need to know.I have such beautiful memories of "In Hell I'll Be Good Company" coming to our attention via Youtube during Lockdown (not sure why as it was released in 2014) – an incredibly catchy track that told the strange tale of an abusive husband killed by his wife. It became a family anthem for 2023 that we all (age range 4-44) perfected our bounce'n' heel Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
You’re here. I’m so happy you’re here. You’re alive. You’re doing so well. Living is so hard. We’re alive. Have you suffered? When we’re alive, we suffer. We suffer to be alive. You must have suffered.Paraphrasing Alabaster DePlume’s on-stage discourse alludes to its disconcerting quality. It takes a while to get used to it. At first, it is perplexing. He looks surprised to see the audience yet speaks directly, initially saying he does not know anything. His intensity suggests he’s seeking to convert his audience to questioning why they – and he and his bassist and drummer – exist. It doesn’t Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Having carried herself to the front rank of young British singer-songwriters with her debut album, 2021’s The Eternal Rocks Beneath, Birmingham-born Katherine Priddy carries her muse from the eternal and mythological poetry of that album for a more centered, experiential sense of time as captured in the back and forth rhythms of The Pendulum Swing.Sealed at the opening and end by two short, limpid instrumental pieces (“Returning” and “Leaving”), the songs within range from evocations of family – the likes of “Walnut Shell”, about her twin brother, and the self-explanatory “Father of Two” Read more ...
joe.muggs
Floridian-born, longtime Brooklyn resident, now Asheville, North Carolina based Roberto Carlos Lange doesn’t rush things, but he gets them done. This is his ninth album in 15 years, during which time he’s built a substantial body of audiovisual / computer art / installation work too. And as with all this creative endeavour, it’s not showy, it doesn’t demand your attention, but it spreads out its ideas and emotions very much at its own pace.His relocation to Asheville came after the Covid lockdown experience in New York – which explicitly inspired 2021’s Far In – and it’s easy to hear a Read more ...
Cheri Amour
Best known for fronting Southern rockers Alabama Shakes, Brittany Howard has always been something of a rule breaker. After bagging four Grammy Awards with the Shakes, Howard cut loose from the rollicking riffs with leather jacket-clad punk solo endevour Thunderbitch. A few years later, she’s sitting porchside singing perfect harmonies in Nashville super group Bermuda Triangle. Then in 2019, she hit upon a route less travelled: her solo debut. Jaime was a sensitive ode to her older sister – and only sibling – who she lost to cancer when they were in their teens). Read more ...