New music
Wet Leg, O2 Forum Kentish Town review - eclectic glee from an emerging bandSaturday, 26 November 2022
Arriving to the second night of two shows in the same venue, you would expect it to be a little quieter. But Wet Leg’s second outing at the O2 in Kentish Town was anything but – their burgeoning reputation (they are supporting Harry Styles next year... Read more... |
The Manhattan Transfer, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - a class actSaturday, 26 November 2022
On a dreary evening in our dark winter of discontent, a couple of hours spent in the company of The Manhattan Transfer was a joyous uplift. The sell-out audience at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall clearly agreed, happily engaging in a sort-of call-and... Read more... |
Album: Sophie Jamieson - ChoosingSaturday, 26 November 2022
Choosing packs a punch – the effect of which lingers. What’s captured by these 11 songs comes across as unfiltered, disconcertingly direct. And what it is that’s captured appears to be an account of someone getting to grips with how their lifestyle... Read more... |
Hewitt, Hallé, Schuldt, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - lightening the gloomFriday, 25 November 2022
If there was a certain doom-laden dimension to Clemens Schuldt’s Bridgewater Hall programme with the Hallé ( … Requiem … Mozart in D minor … Strauss describing Death and …), it was easily lightened by the conductor’s own approach and personality.... Read more... |
Wilko Johnson (1947-2022): The Bard of Canvey IslandFriday, 25 November 2022
Wilko Johnson, who has died aged 75, enjoyed an astonishing afterlife while he was still alive. After Julien Temple’s Dr. Feelgood film Oil City Confidential (2009) restored his crucial former band's profile, a terminal cancer diagnosis in... Read more... |
Album: Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts AglowFriday, 25 November 2022
There’s been a quiet storm of critical approval building around Weyes Blood. American singer Natalie Mering has been releasing music for over a decade but, during the last two or three years a tailwind of positive verbiage has blown her faster... Read more... |
Working Men's Club, Chalk, Brighton review - untrammelled, noisy and grim-facedThursday, 24 November 2022
The chorus to Working Men’s Club’s song “Money is Mine” usually runs, “Endless depression, it’s time/Suicide is yours when the money is mine.” Presented as the penultimate song of their set, frontman Syd Minksy-Sargeant distils this. Grim-faced, his... Read more... |
Album: Micah P Hinson - I Lie to YouWednesday, 23 November 2022
Even the jolliest number on Micah P Hinson’s new album, a banjo-pickin’, wistful campfire jig entitled “Waking on Eggshells”, has him singing, “Give me a knife, I’ll show you my vein”, alongside offers to “blow out your brain” with various firearms... Read more... |
Nu Civilisation Orchestra & ESKA: 'Hejira' and 'Mingus', Poole Lighthouse review - redistributing the futureTuesday, 22 November 2022
I had high hopes for this show. After all, Eska Mtungwazi is pretty much the only singer on earth I’d go out of my way to hear sing Joni Mitchell songs.Not only does she have the necessary vocal range and control, but her own sole solo album sits... Read more... |
EFG London Jazz Festival round-up review - great moments in London's tiny clubsTuesday, 22 November 2022
There are moments when a very great jazz musician makes her or his ideas flow naturally, unstoppably and with complete conviction. And when one is in a tiny venue and can feel the joyous intensity with which every single person in the room is... Read more... |
Album: Carl Cox - Electronic GenerationsMonday, 21 November 2022
Carl Cox is one of the key DJs of his generation, the generation that propagated the club culture which blossomed from the European acid house/rave scene (and originally, of course, from black American house and techno).Going through various musical... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Goin' Round In My Mind - The Merrell Fankhauser AnthologySunday, 20 November 2022
Merrell Fankhauser's first outing on record was with Californian instrumental surf band The Impacts, who issued their sole album in 1963. Thereafter, he was the prime mover in an unbroken succession of pop, psychedelic and freak-rock bands. His... Read more... |
