New music
Thomas H. Green
There are a lot of fucks out there in popland at the moment. Holy Fuck! and Fuck Buttons are happily laying their brand of electonic-tinted drone-rock on the world and then there's Portland Oregon's Starfucker.
joe.muggs
Rap audiences are not renowned for being easy to please – but it's a daring performer indeed who is willing to stand up and drop lyrics in front of some couple of hundred babies and toddlers. Yes, as television's Rastamouse has brought reggae culture to Ceebeebies viewers, so this week DJ, promoter, teacher and poet Charlie Dark has been breaking down the elements of hip-hop for those who are more pre-school than old-school. The free event sounds like a recipe for the worthiest kind of (literally) down-with-the-kids bowdlerisation of a music scene, so it was with some trepidation I strapped Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Rock-folkies can sure be snobs. Even though New Hampshire-born Ray LaMontagne is still relatively unknown over here, there are still purists who view his records with suspicion. They feel the voice is just too huge, the sound too commercial. The irony is that no-one courts attention less than LaMontagne. Last night he delivered the entire concert from a static spot just to the left of the band. And apparently he’s as withdrawn offstage as he is on. But the RFH saw him focussed. Focussed on finding the right way to channel that part-bluebird, part-bear he has for a voice.And on the strength of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Of all the multiple micro-genres that make up the obsessively over-defined world of electronica and dance music, perhaps the dullest has always been deep house. The very words conjur up images of soul boy oldsters who misrecall rave as a jazzual dinner party plod, or poncey clubs that are supposedly classy where no-one actually breaks a sweat on the dancefloor. That reputation is about to change drastically. Over the last couple of years a wave of labels, producers and DJs have taken cues from minimal techno and dragged deep house somewhere slow, subterranean, and ketamine psychedelic.Nicolas Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This month's Singles & Downloads leads off with a new one from an absolute kingpin of US pop and hip hop. However, the focus is equally on the backwaters and curious places where other lively varieties of music dwell. From dancehall raucousness to erudite indie, from ranty punk to funk reinterpretations of American minimalist composition, all pop life is here and keenly assessed by Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs.Kanye West, All of the Lights (Def Jam)
It is a preposterous notion, trying to cram vocals from Elton John, Alicia Keys, Fergie, John Legend, and Elly Jackson of La Roux all onto Read more ...
graeme.thomson
It’s the convention to review concerts on the first night of a tour rather than the last, but in this case it transpired it was rather wise to make an exception. These two groups may make very different kinds of music, but in their questing desire to escape classification last night they seemed to share a certain esprit de corps which added to the sense of occasion.Their jaunt around the UK was a joint headline tour, requiring each group to alternate top billing. It fell to Portico Quartet to open last night, which meant a shorter set that perhaps didn’t allow them time to settle in and Read more ...
graeme.thomson
It didn't take long for the back-to-the-barn modus operandi of bands like Bon Iver, Akron/Family, The Acorn and Fleet Foxes to descend, like a slow fall from A-minor to F, into something close to cliché: we're nowadays up to our horn-rimmed specs in beardy minstrel types peeling off into the backwoods to cook up their scratchy, mildly lysergic freak-folk-rock. Seattle’s Cave Singers live in the same neighbourhood, all right, though perhaps just a couple of miles down the track.The majority of the songs on their third album are circular and trance-like. The two supporting pillars are the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Don’t pull your pants before I go down… Like the shotgun, I need an outcome, I'm your prostitute, you gonna get some”. The lyrics of “Get Some”, the first single from globetrotting Swedish popster Lykke Li’s second album, are unforgettable. The album itself, Wounded Rhymes, is pretty unforgettable too.Her first album, 2008’s Youth Novels, was great – quirky, electro-assisted rhythmic pop with wee hints of Toyah. But Wounded Rhymes is something else. What seemed tame is now wild, unleashed, closer to her whirlwind live persona. She’s said that the close-to two years of touring after Youth Read more ...
howard.male
No, not “trance” in the sense of galloping four-to-the-floor electronic music made by people on Ecstasy for people on Ecstasy. This trance is the original ritualised half-conscious state produced by fast, intensely repetitive, rhythmic tribal music… OK, now I’m thinking about it, we are kind of on the same page here, you just have to appreciate that what this French/Italian/Algerian/Kabyle singer-songwriter is interested in is the spiritual origins of the braindead quantised noise favoured today by the average clubber.She is aided and abetted on this, her third album, by sometime Robert Plant Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There is a certain kind of Northern European songcraft that's difficult for we genre-crazed music journo sorts to categorise. The active components are a musical stew of late-night cabaret blues, oddball jazz-classical instrumentation, a smidgeon of Jacques Brel flavour, surreal lyricism and a quavering soprano female voice. At the forefront of this most miniscule of micro-genres would be Lonely Drifter Karen and Clare and the Reasons (although the latter hails from New York). Whatever we might call it, it's the polar opposite of rock'n'roll, it's often beautiful, and we can now add Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There's been a lot of waffle lately about rock'n'roll being dead. This is down to mainstream radio turning its back on guitar music in favour of a stew of electro-pop and R&B, and the fact that just three spots in the Top 100 UK bestselling singles (ie downloads) of 2010 were held by rock songs (for the record, Journey's "Don't Stop Believing", Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" and "Dog Days are Over" by Florence + the Machine). Whenever this sort of media babble starts, it's time to run for cover because there's undoubtedly another tedious wave of guitar bands waiting gleefully in the wings. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
To mark the release of their new single "Dilly" theartsdesk has limited-edition box sets of Band of Horses album Infinite Arms to give away. The box sets have a CD version, a vinyl version and artwork unique to the set. All potential winners have to do is to answer the four questions below, and just to make it easy the answers will be found by following the embedded links.
Band of Horses' latest album is called Infinite Arms, but what is the first song on the album?
Band of Horses' lead singer Ben Bridwell is sometimes compared to Neil Young. What was the title of the last Neil Young album? Read more ...