New music
Kathryn Reilly
Here’s one woman "of a certain age" who definitely isn’t invisible. But she’s in the middle of a media furore on which we’d rather not dwell. Sadly it might be the very thing that gets her the publicity she surely deserves. Remember when there was no such things as bad publicity? Vastly under-appreciated, she is a creative powerhouse. Innovative, daring and most of all unpredictable. There’s nothing lazy or repetitive here – quite a feat after 30 years in the business. “On paper, I shouldn’t still be able to surprise people this much, so I’m very proud of that. I’ve gone around for the last Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“March of the Flower Children” was a June 1967 B-side by Los Angeles psych-punks The Seeds. The track was extracted from their third album Future, a peculiar dive into psychedelia which was as tense as it was turned on. While the song’s lyrics referenced a “field of flowers,” a “painted castle” and a sky “painted golden yellow” the mood was jittery, unstable.The title has been borrowed by a three-CD clamshell set dedicated to, as its subtitle puts it, “The American Sounds of 1967.” Over around four hours, this March of the Flower Children collects 85 tracks. The Velvet Underground’s “White Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Yussef Dayes brings a particular kind of collaborative energy to the band he leads. It is special, even life-giving. In this type of music, where jazz meets beats and EDM, it does tend to be the drummer who provides all the restless energy anyway, but it is the fact that he is able to do so completely on his own terms which makes it so refreshing. Yes, there are other, similar examples of great drummer/producers around: Makaya McCraven – who has grabbed the moniker "beat scientist" and generally has more hype around him – does not dissimilar things. And with more of a foot in Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s been a lot of flak flying around this album already. It’s mainly been triggered by Burna Boy’s public activities which have included disparaging the wider Afrobeats music scene of West Africa, and some somewhat overcooked expressions of his pan-Africanist philosophy.And this has then been mapped onto his seventh album itself, with various suggestions that he’s hit creative stagnation reflecting embitterment or backstage political shenanigans. If you listened to it blind, though, it would be hard to square it with this scenario. Yes, the artwork and presentation is more swaggering and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Three albums in, Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons have proved themselves a proposition to be reckoned with. A solid live draw, they’ve supported Guns N’ Roses amongst others, and made the album charts in mainland Europe.They may initially have simply been a curiosity for Motörhead fans in the wake Lemmy’s death (Campbell was that band’s guitarist for 31 years) but they’ve now built their own heavy rock niche. Their latest album doesn’t exactly cut new ground but is a solid addition to its predecessors.The band have a new frontman, Joel Peters, having split with Neil Starr in 2021, but are Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Fia is a Swedish singer with a crystalline voice and a ear for a great melody - her singalong choruses are not typical for a festival Friday night headliner, like getting the audience to join in with “Sit with your pain/ cradle it close/ and when you’re ready/ Let it go.” This had a hypnotic effect on the audience, more mass therapy than a having a good time. The lyrics won’t go down as great poetry, but the point of the song was the effect it had, there was an undeniable group energy in the audience - a growing group empathy that every single person in the audience had varying levels of pain Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Frankie and the Witch Fingers’ new album is a heady stew of the loud, the funky and the weird – and it doesn’t let up from the first riff to the last. Make no mistake, Data Doom really does have the band firing on all cylinders the whole way through, so anyone looking for mellow and relaxing tunes might consider moving along.With a new line up that includes Mike Watt’s drummer, Nick Aguilar and Death Valley Girl Nikki “Pickle” Smith on bass, long-timers Dylan Sizemore and Josh Menashe have embraced a sound that suggests proto-punkers Blue Oyster Cult at their most forceful getting down with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Forty-seven years ago this week, a new band called The Clash were seen by a paying audience in London for the first time. On Sunday 29 August 1976 they played Islington’s Screen on the Green cinema, billed between Manchester’s Buzzcocks – their earliest London show – and rising luminaries Sex Pistols. Doors opened at midnight. The anniversary needs marking.At this point, The Clash had three guitarists. They were a five-piece band rather than the four-piece which became familiar. The guitarist who left a few weeks after the Screen on the Green outing was Keith Levene. Along with fellow Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Everything is Alive opens with all that could be wanted from a Slowdive album. “Shanty” is just-under six minutes of out-of-focus, shimmering aural fog in which guitars throb and drums are a distant pulse. An acid-house-type heartbeat is offset against a harpsichord-like refrain recalling Broadcast. Lines drift in about a burning candle and the arrival of night. It all seems to be about the passing of time.Text-book Slowdive then, on a line between their 1993 second album Souvlaki and its 1995 follow-up Pygmalion. The latter became their last release before they split the same year. They Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Let’s face it, well over 50 years into Alice Cooper’s career, you probably already know whether his umpteen-billionth album is for you. Over the last decade, he’s revitalised things by taking a meta look at himself, but, whether harking back to his proto-punk Detroit roots or creating sequels to classic albums, his genial schlock-rock has settled to a calculable pattern.Nothing wrong with that. Worked for Motörhead and The Ramones. As with the later career of those bands, if the listener is inclined, Road has its moments. It's a concept album about being on tour. This is an environment where Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As the relentless, hammering beat of “The Rat” faded away, the Walkmen’s singer Hamilton Leithauser was evidently in buoyant mood. “Like riding a bike,” he declared to the Glasgow crowd, and this was a statement that proved consistently accurate throughout the 75-minute set, as the reunited quintet played in a manner that felt like they’d never been away.As Leithauser acknowledged, bringing the band back together after nine years is considerably more difficult than in their early days, when they thrived among New York’s clubs. Now the group are spread across the USA and, in the case of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any surprises which Jump for Joy brings aren’t about the nature of the music or the unfailingly open lyrics recounting Hiss Golden Messenger main-man M.C. Taylor’s outlook on his life, but an intermittent undertone suggesting he’s been considering the rhythmic foundations of The War On Drugs. In the sixth song, “Jesus is Bored” there’s a hint of WOD’s fondness for a chugging, insistent tempo. It’s more to the fore on eighth track “Feeling Eternal.”In essence though, Jump for Joy adroitly showcases the mélange the North Carolina-based Taylor has perfected. In the studio here with his touring Read more ...