New music
Russ Coffey
In the summer of ’86, The Cult’s Ian Astbury invited The Mission on tour with them. Mission main man, Wayne Hussey, had recently fled the role of guitarist in The Sisters of Mercy to lead his own band. Goth fans had high hopes for them. Some thought they would eventually become bigger than the Cult. Over the next few years, though, both career paths defied expectations.The Cult became a stadium-metal act, and The Mission gradually drifted into making good albums that few listened to. But the Cult’s success was not to last. A row in 1995 saw them go their separate ways. Doldrums and solo Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On the 35th anniversary of the year punk met the mainstream, it’s to be expected that retrospection and nostalgia are in the air. Television has had a go, albums are being reissued and old soldiers are telling their stories. By its very nature an anniversary suggests that things were cut and dried, that 1977 was a beginning or a marker in the sand. But the exhibition Someday All the Adults Will Die: Punk Graphics 1971-1984 at the Southbank’s Hayward Gallery Project Space and the publication of the related book Punk: An Aesthetic both underline that things aren’t and weren’t so clear.Both the Read more ...
peter.quinn
Enthusiasts of the tenor sax will find it impossible not to be swayed by this terrific follow-up to Trish Clowes' impressive 2010 debut, Tangent. Apart from her highly distinctive melodic fingerprint, it's the composer's terrific ear for textural detail that really draws you into this 10-track collection: the ever-so-subtle cello harmonics that underpin the intro to album opener “Atlas”, the constant ticking of “On/Off”, the ghostly violin figurations enfolding the bass solo in “Animator”.The album's sole song is typically individual and about as far from the Great American Songbook as you Read more ...
andy.morgan
The carriage swayed violently, sending a bottle of Perroni sliding across the Formica table top and into the quick hand of Malian guitarist Afel Bocoum. As we sped along, the sun sent flecks of light up the walls, across the ceiling, along the luggage racks and back down over assorted musicians who were sleeping, lounging, talking or playing music together in small groups. A green noise of trees and hedges blurred past our window, whilst barebacked hills seemed to stand completely still in the blue distance. The Africa Express was cruising through Dumfries and Galloway on its way to down to Read more ...
howard.male
Marc Bolan’s voice was as inseparable from his songs as the sheen and shimmer of one of his Biba satin jackets was inseparable from the jacket itself. That unique faux-posh phrasing, singing whimsical, surreal lyrics, became texturally essential to every T Rex song. Because his voice was such an integral aspect of his music, I had mixed feelings about last night’s tribute concert in aid of the PRS for Music Members Benevolent Fund. Would the diverse mix of artists try to mimic the Bolan warble, or take the wiser course of putting their own spin on his material?On the whole things went Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Shields leaves standing everything Grizzly Bear have done previously. Four albums in, the Brooklyn quartet move forward with their most focused, most cohesive album yet. The folk influence remains, as do traces of their love of The Beach Boys, but Shields is – mostly – so confident it could be a debut album. It’s also the first time all the songwriting has been credited to the entire band.It opens with “Sleeping Ute”, a swirling psychedelic vortex evoking longing and endings: “those countless empty days made me dizzy when I woke… I know no other way than straight on out the door”. It’s a Read more ...
theartsdesk
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros: Global A Go-Go, StreetcoreLisa-Marie FerlaAs well as marking the 10th anniversary of Joe Strummer's death, 2012 would also have been the year the legendary Clash frontman turned 60. The reissue of these two albums, recorded with his last band the Mescaleros, is therefore doubly timely.The band's three albums built on the very best of the globe-trotting, more experimental themes that had begun to sneak into The Clash's work before they disbanded in 1985, but did so in a way that kept them vital and accessible to those of us raised on three-chord punk Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Gaslamp Killer is Californian DJ-producer William Bensussen, beardy Weird Al Yankovich lookalike and one of the key figures in LA’s Brainfeeder label collective. His reputation began to rise around five years ago with an LA club night called Low End Theory that would play music rooted in hip hop and electronica, far from four-to-the-floor house - tending, in fact, towards the bizarre. His debut album is much anticipated by those who like their beats broken and their synthesisers gnarly. Breakthrough, then, is a thoroughly enjoyable experience in that vein, albeit not as off-the-wall Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Patti Smith does not appear to change very much, visually. Her image is undoubtedly part of her appeal, especially in Brighton with its large lesbian population. She arrives on stage in pale blue jeans, a white shirt and a baggy cardy-style jacket, face unadorned with make-up and hair straggled down around her shoulders. From a distance she looks very much as she did in the mid-Seventies. She certainly doesn’t look 65.Her Brighton audience are zealously partisan. This has a dual effect. It gives the evening real electricity and a sense of laser-focused affection which Smith bathes in, Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's a truism in dance music culture that “everyone's a DJ nowadays”. It's generally meant in a flip, pejorative sense – suggesting that cheap technology means every man Jack and his dog can put a sequence of records together and the role is somehow devalued. But it hides a rather more positive truth, which is that dance culture is intrinsically participative, that the line between industry and punters is so blurred as to be non-existent, that those punters truly are easily as important as the hallowed DJs they look up to.Certainly at the Dimensions Festival, the boundaries seem pretty fluid Read more ...