New music
theartsdesk
Various Artists: Sound System - The Story of Jamaican MusicThomas H Green This is lovely, a box-set celebration of Jamaican music, marking 50 years of the country’s independence. In a brooks-no-argument fashion, it reminds the forgetful that the Caribbean island punches so, so far above its geographical weight that gobs remain fully smacked over 30 years after the death of the man who gave reggae a global profile in the first place, Bob Marley (who is, incidentally, absent). Aside from the music, though, Sound System’s eight CDs arrive in a chunky 12 x 12in box that contains a coffee table Read more ...
garth.cartwright
New Orleans brass remains the elemental party sound of the Crescent City with groups of young black men providing a bright, swaggering soundtrack to jazz funerals and second line parades. Originally, the brass bands grew out of working men’s clubs that acted as de facto unions in the then segregated south. The likes of Louis Armstrong (and many others) got an early musical initiation via playing on the street and even today it's possible to visit New Orleans and find brass bands busking in the French Quarter or, if more established, crowding onto a stage in a local bar.The Hot 8 Brass Band Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Despite his previous nine albums, Duke Special may still be best known for his “hobo Tim Minchin” look, and the lavish songs “Our Love Goes Deeper” and “Last Night I Nearly Died”. For those on the lookout for more of the same action, however, the new album may prove something of a disappointment: Oh Pioneer is actually a much more subdued creature. Yet, by shedding the melody-rich “chamber pop” mantle, Peter Wilson has, in fact, arrived at a sound that's potentially more mainstream. So what’s it like, and will it sell?This is an album that, when in a reflective mood, you can get lost inOne Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The Queen made a rare visit to Glasgow yesterday. Now as luck would have it Liz 'n' Philip did too, apparently driving by my office on their way to George Square for afternoon tea and a quick chorus of long-to-reign-over-us (at least until 2014), and in the process lending this opening paragraph a rare note of topicality. However I'd be very surprised if the pair of them received quite so rapturous a welcome, or experienced as many people take an icy command to "bow down to me" so literally, as Shirley Manson on her triumphant return to the Barrowlands.Such is the fickle nature of pop music Read more ...
Nick Levine
Compared to previous Dirty Projectors records, Swing Lo Magellan is a walk in the park with a piece of cake to follow. Then again, previous Dirty Projectors records include a so-called "glitch opera" about Don Henley, a "re-imagining" of a punk album that Dave Longstreth hadn't heard in 15 years, and an EP featuring a 10-piece chamber music collective that Longstreth put together and then named "First Orchestral Society for the Preservation of the Orchestra."Their last album, 2009's Bitte Orca, found the singer-songwriter-producer and his willing minstrels edging towards the straightforward. Read more ...
howard.male
Over recent years a number of musicians and bands have immersed themselves in the exotic funky sound of 1960s/70s Ethiopian jazz (brought to our attention by the Éthiopiques CD series) to produce excellent new music. The best of these acts include The Heliocentrics (with guest Éthiopiques star Mulatu Astatke), The Imperial Tiger Orchestra, Getatchew Mekuria and the Ex (Mekuria being another of the style’s original exponents) and Dub Colossus. The latter provided a useful launchpad for this supremely gifted and versatile young pianist.But this solo album is by no means just a showcase for Read more ...
theartsdesk
Brand-free, eschewing sponsorship, and letting kids in for free, the Hop Farm Festival in Paddock Wood, Kent, has risen steadily in stature to become one of the major fixtures on the UK festival circuit. If the festival is young, most of its audience and stars are of a certain age. Last year saw Morrisey, Patti Smith, Lou Reed and Manu Chao headline, while Prince played his only UK show there.This year the emphasis was on great English eccentrics like Ray Davies, Suede, the Psychedelic Furs and, enjoying his newly hip status, Gary Numan, while the likes of White Denim, Race Horses, The Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Regina’s Spektor’s kooky New York piano gal shtick sure divides audiences. For every person who finds her a perfect antidote (I refuse to say adorkable) to all that’s mainstream and soulless, there is someone else who wants to punch her on the nose for singing “on the Braa-dio-uh-oh” instead of “on the radio.”Mind you, it’s not all icing sugar. She might have started her career sounding like an ad man's idea of a pixie dream girl, but time has proved she really means it. Still, it can get a bit syrupy, no? Well, last night it didn’t. Thumping out power chords and belting out slogans like “ Read more ...
Nigel Williamson
Bob Dylan once described himself as ''just a song and dance man''. If the phrase was intended to debunk our veneration of him as the voice of a generation and to imply that he's just an old-fashioned entertainer in the great showbiz tradition, devotees have never believed him and have carried on seeking clues to the meaning of life in his work, campaigning for him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and generally treating his every utterance as if he's the Oracle.Yet at the Hop Farm deep in rural Kent on a cool, moonlit Saturday night, the serious artist was finally transformed into song Read more ...