New music
Tom Carr
In the era of TikTok and Spotify playlists, it’s hard to gauge when an artist will reach the nebulous threshold and become popular. But for those who can ride this game of algorithms – the change can be sudden.Look no further than Sleep Token. The British metal collective whose anonymity and heavy gothic apparel set them apart upon entering the scene. Their unique style, coupled with a metal sound that defies firm genre definitions quickly garnered them a niche following since 2017.With their two albums so far (2019 debut Sundowning and 2021’s This Place Will Become Your Tomb) their Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Estonia’s Mart Avi styles himself as “the twilight samurai of alternative pop”. He creates “nowhere-somewhere music, mapping uncharted territories between avant-pop and timeless grandeur”. The characterisations are issued via AVICORP, his internet presence.The in-person Mart Avi has an arresting charisma; a star quality making it impossible not to be drawn in by his 40-minute performance at Tallinn Music Week. The look could be enough – cutting a David Bowie and Brett Anderson dash. Despite what he says about its nebulousness, his music is a moody electropop with shades of The Associates, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kesha is one of the 21st century’s most characterful pop stars. She’s regularly stepped out of the boxes people have put her in, musically and otherwise. But, even taking into account truly oddball songs such as “Godzilla” (from 2017’s Rainbow), or projects such as working with Flaming Lips, Gag Order, created with cosmic ultra-producer Rick Rubin, is by far her most out-there work. It’s also the sound of a tormented human being.On her first two albums Kesha personified young American women raucously embracing hedonism, breaking out of the cultural straitjackets that had head-melted Britney, Read more ...
joe.muggs
Paul Simon is an ornery bugger. Full of awkwardness and perversity as a person, seemingly hugely detached, but as an artist capable of as much tenderness and directness as just about anyone out there. Capable of making world-changing artistic statements but queering his pitch with bizarrely, unnecessarily reactionary statements or actions. Really, a very weird man.But thankfully, he’s never gone all the way into cantankerousness. He’s not a Morrissey, so high on his own farts that the perversity becomes his entire persona, and every action and word is layered with provocation and second Read more ...
caspar.gomez
“stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover.” So said Charles Bukowski in his poem “how to be a great writer”. Who am I to argue. It’s a bright day and 11.50 AM. The sun isn’t past the yard-arm but the beer is cold and good. IPA. Finetime and I stand with Vanessa, her 18-year-old son Cody and her mate Jodie. Vanessa has a short blond crop which glows.We’re to the west of Brighton, by the sea, the outdoor enclave of The Great Escape. As in other years, the three stages are dominated on Saturday by Australian acts. We’re here to catch the first of the day in the Amazon New Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Life is better together, and the beauteous sounds created by The Milk Carton Kids proves it. Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan got their acts together in 2011, having each pursued solo careers that never quite gelled. Ryan pitched up at a Pattengale gig in Eagle Rock, California, which was home for both of them.They recorded their first album live at Zoey’s Café in Ventura a few months later and would soon be featured in the all-star line-up for Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis. Now comes their sixth studio album, their first since The Only Ones, a short Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In July 2007, an article in The Guardian expressed surprise that shoegazing was influencing a series of current musicians, Blonde Redhead, Deerhunter, Maps and Ulrich Schnauss amongst them.“You could hear the heady, woozy influence of a style of music that had been a byword for naffness and overindulgence for the past 15 years,” said the article’s opening paragraph. “A type of music that Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers had said he ‘hated more than Hitler’".Five years on, in the same newspaper, a May 2012 live review of America’s Beach House said much the same thing: “The early Read more ...
joe.muggs
In one sense you know what you’re going to bet with Róisín Murphy. Disco beats, a lot of bright colours, costume changes, goofing about, kick-arse vocals, and hats – lots and lots of hats. And yes, all that was present and correct at the Royal Albert Hall. But in another way, any given show is alien territory.Murphy is an artist who has never sat still since her first releases with Moloko in 1994, not just reinventing herself from project to project as is standard for savvy pop acts, but shifting from minute to minute between accents, sounds, attitudes, seriousness and foolishness, futurism Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Mali’s Tuareg superstars, Tinariwen have been burnishing their assouf desert blues sounds with the echoes of folk and country sounds from the rural USA for some time – most especially on their 2014 Emmaar and more recent Amadjar albums. However, these foreign sounds have never felt more than a bit of decoration before now.Amatssou, an album produced by Daniel Lanois, with pedal steel, banjo and fiddle from Wes Corbett and Fats Kaplin and additional percussion by Amar Chaoui, feels more like a focussed collaboration between two distinct musical genres – even if it was largely put together at a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Brighton is writhing with music biz sorts. The Great Escape is here, the multi-venue festival that’s taken place here for over a decade-and-a-half, presenting bands from all over the world, most of them little known, at least in the UK. It takes place over four days, Wednesday to Saturday, although not much happens on Wednesday, so the real Day One is Thursday, and here we are. We’ll be back Saturday for a full day-long mash-up but, to start off, here's a quick dive into the first evening, starting at the Latest Music Bar, on a central street perpendicular to the seafront. Upstairs is an airy Read more ...
mark.kidel
“Yerimayo Celebration”, which opens Baaba Maal’s brilliant and superbly paced new album, sets the tone: it starts in the mists of time, as it were, drawing deep on the minimal soul of traditional West African music: a plucked ngoni, and a haunting voice. The spirits have been summoned.Then, the song explodes, driven by the rhythmic clatter of the sabar drums, so characteristic of the region, with subtle voice distortions and electronic effects. This is fusion of the ancient and new that works wonderfully.The song celebrates fishermen, the clan from which Baabal Maal comes, rather than from a Read more ...
India Lewis
As my editor noted, this was the first gig in his 30 years of music journalism that had guided meditation as its support act. This set the tone for a beautiful, peaceful evening at the ICA for Lucinda Chua, a homecoming gig and a welcome listen to pieces from her new and older albums.Sitting cross legged on the floor, reading my book, drying out from the spring rain, and waiting for the support, I heard someone comment that this was the most chilled gig that they had ever been to. Ten minutes later, lying down and staring at the ceiling, I would have had to agree. The meditation was led by a Read more ...