New music
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Like most things about the suited, bespectacled image of Chris Brown that stares intensely at something to his right from his new album’s cool blue artwork (currently: the remains of the delicious spicy chicken pizza I had for dinner), the title Fortune is not an accident. For Brown has, as anybody who hasn’t been living under some pop culture rock these past three years, been a very fortunate lad. Although technically still on probation for the brutal assault of his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009, such is the esteem with which this man is held by his contemporaries in American pop that he Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Arts Desk has been voted Specialist Journalism Site of 2012 at the Online Media Awards. In a celebratory dinner at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium recognising "the best and boldest of online news-based creativity and also the most original", The Guardian were the major winners with five awards, but even their new Data Store section was outgunned in the Specialist Journalism category by The Arts Desk.In a category contested by 11 nominees, The Arts Desk's prize was the first of two given by the judges acclaiming two specialist sites "for very different reasons" - the other went to The Economist Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
When Clarence “Big Man” Clemons, the E Street Band’s charismatic saxophone player, died of stroke-related complications this time last year, there were those among us who wondered if we’d ever see the band together again. His on-stage interplay with Bruce Springsteen seemed to have become even more central to the greatest rock'n'roll show on earth since the band reformed proper in 1999, even if the knees that supported that magnificent frame could no longer hold out the length of shows that regularly topped the three-hour mark. That this year’s Wrecking Ball tour proudly bore the E Street Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bloopy Seventies synths. Glitter Band drums. The fuzz guitar of Sweet’s “Blockbuster”. Eighties electro-robot-pop. New wave chug. The hot dog streets of West Bromwich. Morning TV. Bailiffs at the door, The secularisation of institutions and the decline of civic pride. Mickie Most and his plastic pop. These then, are amongst the contents of the new tablet handed down by former Felt leader, perennial underdog and über-cult figure Lawrence. Bizarre and enjoyable, it’s disquieting too. “Hello, I’m Lawrence and I’m taking over” he declares colourlessly.A series of close-typed, dense paragraphs Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“America treats its musical titans as disposable, and I’m not disposable.” Coming from anyone else, Van Dykes Parks’ declaration last night might have been self-aggrandising. Parks is 69, but he could have said this during any of the last four decades with no problem. He is a titan, and he is not disposable. Coinciding with the reissue of his first three albums, this concert reached back to 1968 and stopped off at all points from then on. And before too.Parks has opinions and isn't shy of expressing them. He wants you to think. Like his music, he arranges words baroquely and meanings are Read more ...
Natalie Shaw
The minister for culture Ed Vaizey has said that London 2012 isn't just about London, but showcasing Britain to the world. This may be true in the simple geographical spread of events leading up to the Olympic Games, but in Derry-Londonderry's case, it ís equally about instilling a sense of civic pride. In 1991, Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney adapted Sophocles' Philoctetes as The Cure at Troy. His verse on the timeless qualities of human nature seemed to exist outside the situation Derry found itself in back then, although his words on how the city would "heal" now read like a Read more ...
Natalie Shaw
The rise of Korean pop (or K-pop, for short) in Europe has been steady; conceivably, all that’s needed for the common or garden music fan to become enraptured is one crossover artist. Countless new acts sprung up following the first wave of K-idols - G.O.D., SES, H.O.T., Shinhwa - and a new one continues to appear almost every week, unveiled after years of training. They often live in boarding schools with strict diets and no guarantee of success, a regime for which the Korean culture industry is estimated to have generated some $3 billion. K-pop has started influencing western Read more ...
Nick Levine
"Synthetica is about forcing yourself to confront what you see in the mirror when you finally stand still long enough to catch a reflection. Synthetica is about being able to identify the original in a long line of reproductions. It's about what is real versus what is artificial." That's what Emily Haines says about Metric's fifth album. It's as much about getting older. It would be unchivalrous to reveal the singer's age, but it's closer to 40 than 30, and her band have maintained a steady upward trajectory since 1998. Their last album, 2009's Fantasies, sold half a million worldwide and got Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Make it Your Sound, Make it Your Scene – Vanguard Records & the 1960s Musical RevolutionKieron TylerSeymour and Maynard Solomon’s Vanguard Records hasn’t been given the same amount of recognition as Jac Holzman’s Elektra, despite both labels being equally important and having trodden – at least up to the late Sixties – very similar paths. This neat four-CD box set should ensure that Vanguard gets more recognition.Like Elektra, Vanguard cast its net into New York. Also like Elektra, its earliest releases didn’t suggest a coherent strategy. Viennese waltzs, Elizabethan Read more ...
bruce.dessau
On his last UK tour comedian Frank Skinner sang a song about Osama Bin Laden in the style of George Formby that contained the following couplet: "He had one hit then he went away, like a terrorism Macy Gray". Very witty, but rather harsh on the Grammy-winning singer who has sold over 15 million albums. Then again, maybe Frank had a point in a way. How many people outside that admittedly 15 million-strong fan club would be able to name many more hits than her global pain-soaked calling card "I Try".This new album may not notch up any more smashes, but it certainly makes its mark. We already Read more ...
Andrew Perry
The suspicion that Jack White is a humourless plank-spanker, harboured by certain members of the media at least, has been thrown into deeper conjecture this past month, with the news that he’s entered into a war of words with the compilers of The Guinness Book Of Records.With his first band, The White Stripes, he’d secured an entry in the trusty annual’s 2009 edition for performing the shortest-ever concert – a one-note affair in Newfoundland, Canada in 2007, which may or may not have been a spontaneous gag for the benefit of a rockumentary being shot at the time. Since then, numerous rival Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Claude François doesn’t have the hipster cachet of Serge Gainsbourg, but he did lead an extraordinary life and died young. He also wrote “Comme d’habitude” which was Anglicised to become “My Way”. His live shows were spectacular, the women he married, dated and flirted with were striking, he had tax debts, a father who rejected him and his chosen career, and a mother addicted to gambling. It’s more than enough to fuel this two-and-a-half hour biopic.But Cloclo isn’t going to lead to an Anglophone embracing of François – universally known by the nickname Cloclo. However strong the image, his Read more ...