New music
Thomas H. Green
The word “grimes” conjures up images of a Dickensian London underworld, or of tough modern urban music, but Grimes is far, far from these reference points. For starters, she’s from Canada. She also makes music that defies easy categorisation. Visions is her third album but it is a lot less niche than her first two, as if she has finally bloomed sonically. In the broadest sense it’s electro-pop but Claire Boucher – Grimes – spices her computer sounds with a swooping multi-tracked vocal style that recalls Kate Bush, Enya and the Cocteau Twins rather than Lily Allen.Some songs, such as “ Read more ...
ash.smyth
I spent a fair chunk of last Sunday evening at Douglas Adams' 60th birthday party. This was a bit of a curve ball, not only because I'd never met the author of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - but also because he's been dead for nearly 11 years. But there he was, all the same, selling out the Hammersmith Apollo with a little help from Stephen Fry, Clive James, Jon Culshaw, a couple of thousand nerds in dressing gowns, and a posse of dancing rhinoceroses.The Supreme Hitch-Hiker, author of a five-part trilogy (now six-) and creator of Dirk Gently, was by all acounts a classic Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s two songs into Port of Morrow, the Shins’ first album since 2007’s Wincing the Night Away (and the band’s first to be distributed by a major label, Columbia) and it hits me that what I’m hearing isn’t something I’ve heard before. Sure, the track - “Simple Song” - started streaming on the band’s website back in January with accompanying fanfare, but that isn’t exactly what I mean. It’s more that those first two songs sound like a continuation, and a surprising one at that.When you’ve had any level of investment in a band at all, news of a full-on line-up change never goes over well. While Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In the age of Mumford & Sons we should recall that half a century ago, folk music wasn’t so much acoustic pop as agitprop, staunch leftwing propaganda. Singers such as Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger toured songs rife with witty, angry social discontent, incidentally setting in place the UK’s early gig and festival circuit. In the same way, in the broadest strokes, British politics was also a different beast, not a media competition to see who could make the least offensive – or meaningful – statement possible, but a theatre of ideas, the new left battling the old right, the faint whiff of Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The Southbank Centre has announced that musician/visual artist Antony will be curating the 19th Meltdown Festival this August. The avant-garde performer and lead singer with Mercury Award-winning Antony and the Johnsons follows in the footsteps of previous directors including Jarvis Cocker, Robert Wyatt, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Ornette Coleman, David Bowie and, most recently, Ray Davies.The artist who emerged from the New York underground art scene of the early 1990s will curate 12 days of music, debate and performance that reflect his interests, influences and passions. Issues Read more ...
peter.quinn
Following last year's remarkable Grammy win for Best New Artist, the first time a jazz musician has won the award, the bassist, singer and composer returns with a companion piece to her previous disc, the intimate Chamber Music Society. And within a few bars of the scene-setting lead-off track, “Radio Song”, you're completely hooked. Brilliantly imitating the experience of searching through the radio frequencies until a killer hook suddenly leaps out at you, this vibrantly coloured musical collage is quite unlike anything else you've heard from Esperanza Spalding.On tracks such as “ Read more ...
peter.quinn
Bringing together the most talented choirs, vocalists and musicians from across London and the UK, iGospel's two-day Sing Inspiration! Festival came to a close in spectacular fashion. Lurine Cato opened the concluding "Gospel & Soul" concert, showcasing her impressive five-octave range on “You Revive Me”, the first single from her forthcoming debut album. With one, ever higher, key change after another, Cato's deluxe pipes made some better-known pop singers sound like common-or-garden pub belters.Call-and-response sections with the audience can often be slightly tuneless, let's-get-this- Read more ...