New music
Album: Aoife Nessa Frances - ProtectorThursday, 27 October 2022
There’s a song by Kevin Ayers called “The Lady Rachel”. It was on his 1969 debut solo LP Joy Of A Toy. Play it alongside “This Still Life”, the second track on the second album from Ireland’s Aoife Nessa Frances and the aesthetic kinship is clear.... Read more... |
Album: Taylor Swift - MidnightsWednesday, 26 October 2022
Taylor Swift’s transitions have become imperious, from the woody hush of her collaborations with The National’s Aaron Dessner, Folklore and Evermore, to the remade reclamations of her early work. Working at pace, she has assembled an impregnable... Read more... |
Album: Goat - Oh DeathTuesday, 25 October 2022
It’s now six years since Goat last released an album of new songs and, despite a live disc and one of B-sides and other odds and sods that have appeared in the meantime, its Requiem title suggested that it might have been their last call to arms.... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Living Daylights - Let's Live For TodaySunday, 23 October 2022
In the third week of April 1967, Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Somethin’ Stupid” topped the UK’s single’s chart. Sandie Shaw’s “Puppet on a String” was number two, and The Monkees’ “A Little Bit me a Little Bit You” snapped at her heels. Englebert... Read more... |
Bob Dylan, London Palladium - busy painting his masterpieceSaturday, 22 October 2022
It’s the second night of a four-night run at the London Palladium of the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Tour – no other Dylan jaunt has taken an album for its title – and it begins with a blast of symphonic violence from the first movement of Beethoven’... Read more... |
Let's Eat Grandma, Patterns, Brighton review - odd-pop duo remain a contagious one-offSaturday, 22 October 2022
At the start of the song “Two Ribbons” Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth of Let’s Eat Grandma do a brief schoolyard pat-a-cake hand-game. The song is a guileless ode to female friendship, love even, a paean to their own bond, which was strained at... Read more... |
The Orb, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review - ambient house duo celebrate 30 years of UF OrbSaturday, 22 October 2022
Ten minutes before The Orb got on stage at the Hare & Hounds, Alex Paterson was standing in the building’s courtyard with a big old spliff in his hand “clearing his head” and getting ready for action. So, it was good to know that some things don... Read more... |
Album: Witch Fever - CongregationSaturday, 22 October 2022
Witch Fever are a seething punk outfit from Manchester whose debut album rampages at the patriarchy with unbridled fury. The tone throughout is summed up in “Sour”, wherein grimy, gloomy riffin’ is accompanied by oblique references to Christianity,... Read more... |
Angeline Morrison, Cecil Sharp House - a ballad-maker for our timeFriday, 21 October 2022
Among those making her Cambridge Folk Festival on the diminutive Club Stage back in the summer was Angeline Morrison, a Birmingham-born singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who these days makes her home in Cornwall, drawn at least in part... Read more... |
Album: Arctic Monkeys - The CarFriday, 21 October 2022
Who could really make head or tail of Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino? It was weird. Interesting, occasionally brilliant, but definitely weird. Now it’s time to almost come back down to earth (but not Sheffield earth,... Read more... |
Bonfire Radicals, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review - un-traditional folkies unveil their new albumThursday, 20 October 2022
Folk music? It’s all old blokes in shapeless clothes wailing on about ploughmen and fishermen, isn’t it?Not in the hands of the Bonfire Radicals it isn’t. In fact, their sophomore album launch at the Hare and Hounds not only challenged this somewhat... Read more... |
Album: Loyle Carner - HugoThursday, 20 October 2022
You’ll want to love Loyle Carner. There’s so much about what he gives and how he delivers it that’s disarming, charming, brilliant even. His lyrics across this album are very obviously from the heart and took real courage to hammer into shape. He... Read more... |
