New music
graeme.thomson
There are two fundamentally opposing schools of thought on Florence Welch and her mysterious machine. For the believers, her music belongs to the tradition of questing, modernist pop with a pagan trim of the kind Kate Bush made before she started writing 14-minute songs about having sex with snowmen. To the naysayers, on the other hand, she’s both shallow and contrived, a paint-stripping belter desperate to lend her sub-Siouxsie Sioux shtick gravitas by grafting on a skin of borrowed poses and studied weirdness.Neither view quite nails it. In reality, Welch makes occasionally stirring but Read more ...
david.cheal
It’s a long time since I laughed during a show as much as I did in this one. And not, I hasten to add, in a snarky, narky, sarky way, but simply because it was fun. In another illustration of just how deeply competitive the business of the arena pop show has become, Britney Spears’s Femme Fatale tour is a formidable song-and-dance spectacle, with a full complement of dancers and hydraulics and epic visuals, and one that also features some damn fine music. But what makes this one memorable is that it's sexy and silly in equal measure.First, I laughed at the sheer campness of the opening Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This might not have been a bad album if Lou Reed wasn't on it, but its 95 minutes would still have been 50 per cent too long. Not being privy to the inner workings of the Metallica universe, I have no idea why the speaker-bursting veterans thought that working with Reed might be to their advantage, unless they'd fallen for Lou's own propaganda about Metal Machine Music being a masterpiece. In the end, the band gathered in the studio to whip up a batch of piledriver riffs and broody instrumental backdrops, over which Reed has been permitted to intone lyrics (said to be inspired by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
This wasn’t going to offer any surprises. Bernadette Nolan, Lulu and Stacey Solomon would deliver the questions they’d rehearsed. Manilow would respond, then deliver the relevant song. He’s a charmer, and you’d have to be made of lead not to be lifted by some of his songs. But he didn’t need this audience and format. The interaction added nothing. His fantasticness doesn't need restating.Barry Manilow will never be hip. His path is similar to Randy Newman’s, but his early liaison with Bette Midler always meant he was going to be broader, lean towards the bold, the brash. Answering a question Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Noel Gallagher is hardly renowned for his willingness to stand on the precipice and leap into the unknown. A songwriter happy to work well within his own limitations, he has embarked upon his solo career (don’t be fooled by the “High Flying Birds” shtick; this is a star-plus-hired-hands job) with due caution. Indeed, his new album conforms so precisely to the preconceived notion of what a solo Noel Gallagher album would sound like you half suspect the whole project may one day be outed as some conceptual prank.Likewise, last night’s Edinburgh concert was entirely risk-free, with no hint of Read more ...
joe.muggs
Joker, aka 22 year old Bristolian Liam McLean, is one of the most individual talents of the dubstep/grime generation. His long run of dancefloor-directed single releases, some originally recorded when he was in his early teens, showed natural gifts for finding the funk in the sparsest rhythms and for frazzlingly catchy melodic synth riffs which meant his productions leapt out of DJ sets wherever and whenever they were played. Now, following a quiet 18 months, his debut album shows that he's not content to rest on his laurels.The Vision is a high-gloss affair. McLean has always been a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
New Order’s “Blue Monday” might be the bestselling 12” single ever. It might not be. Either way, Factory Records released it on the 12” format only and it was given dry runs by club DJs. Although Factory had an overriding visual aesthetic, it was a wilful label with little musical coherence and no set way of doing things. Dance music, though, was central to Factory, and the new compilation Fac.Dance celebrates that in a way that was impossible in the scattershot Eighties.Fac.Dance collects 24 tracks issued between 1980 and 1987. Most were originally heard on 12” singles and were either Read more ...
david.cheal
An aura of mystique surrounds Tinariwen. The members of this group’s shifting line-up are from the Tuareg people, nomadic Berbers of the North African desert regions, and several have taken part in armed Tuareg rebellions in the past. This air of mystery is enhanced by their garb – flowing robes and extravagant headdresses that mask most of the face (though singer/guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabib keeps his head – and his fabulous frizz of hair – uncovered). Their music, too, has a mystical quality, its repeated refrains acquiring a cumulative hypnotic potency.All this was in evidence at this one- Read more ...
andy.morgan
All was quiet in room 509 when I turned up with my bottle of Jura whisky. Tinariwen’s sound engineer, Jaja, was watching a vampire movie on TV. Elaga, their rhythm guitarist, was sitting at a small, darkly varnished table eating pasta from a Styrofoam carton. Said the percussionist was lying on his bed, delving through the archive of photos and recordings on his LG mobile, keeping his own counsel as he usually does. As I entered I saw Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Tinariwen’s iconic founder and frontman (pictured below right), standing by the window. He looked better than he had done that morning Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ah, the Duke of York’s Picture House, the oldest consistently operating purpose-built cinema in the country. It’s a beautiful venue, just over a century old, and almost too comfortable. It’s been jazzed up a few times over the decades and, tonight, bathed in red light, wears its history with lazy insouciance, merging it with the current interior design’s burlesque Art Deco spin. My seat is at the back of the balcony, plush and comfortable, with a little shelf where I place my salted popcorn and horrible pear cider (the latter, a mistake). Mostly the Duke of York’s is still a cinema but they Read more ...
peter.quinn
Spoiler alert: this CD contains grooves that will bring out your inner air guitarist. From the album's lead-off song, “Tenderly”, whose sumptuous voicings lesser artists can only fantasise about, to its towering sign-off, “Fingerlero”, George Benson's 24-carat gift for free-flowing improv remains a thing of wonder. “Fingerlero” also features one of the most recognisable and heart-stirring sounds in jazz: Benson scatting in perfect unison with his deftly picked guitar lines. He makes you wait, but it's so worth it.Heard in both combo and solo settings, the 12-track set includes nods to Read more ...
bruce.dessau
With the scheduled start time of last night's gig long gone and George Michael nowhere in sight, scurrilous jokes, gossip and unfounded rumours were floating around the Royal Albert Hall. We won't reprint them here but, needless to say, funny ciggies and Hampstead Heath were being mentioned. George's offstage antics might keep the red tops interested, but once he kicked the show off, backed by a 41-piece orchestra for the opening performance of the London run of his Symphonica tour, his glittering musical pedigree was absolutely centre stage.This was certainly an odd gig though. Often slow, Read more ...