New music
Kieron Tyler
Each new Beatles album offered a chance for other acts to record their own versions of songs which didn’t make it onto singles. What was on the long-player could pick up attention if it was covered. Revolver was no exception. Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers’s version of “Got to Get You Into my Life” was in the charts the August 1966 week Revolver was issued.Revolver’s “Here There and Everywhere” was recorded by The Fourmost. “For no One” was covered by Paul McCartney sound-alike Marc Reid, “Yellow Submarine” by The She Trinity. None were hits, and The She Trinity were gazumped by The Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
I hate Alex Turner. Ever since he and his spotty crew upended my rather dull existence in 2005 (courtesy of not entirely legal streaming services) I have been in his thrall. But everyone loved Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not and most people moved on. But bear with me, reader. In my defence, I had reached rock bottom a few years before, ending up being hospitalised. And kind of given up on music (I was “too old”, I told myself). But I turned a corner, got out and eventually found a great job working with fabulous people. Then, shortly after I’d discovered “The Ritz Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s been a shit year. Global horrors from Kiev to Karachi and Tehran to Texas all somehow feeling too close for comfort, and even closer to home heatstroke, frostbite, floods, strikes, impoverishment, the grinding realisation that pestilence is a long term way of life now…I’ve never been so glad of the extreme privilege of just being able to keep my head above water, but even given that there’s been misery, grief, regret and a whole heap of grinding tedium. Which in turn means I’ve never – and I mean this most vividly: NEVER – been so glad to have music and the rich culture and subculture Read more ...
Tim Cumming
There’s much fun to be had with snow, and fun things go with it, too, such as album launches in Soho on a freezing Saturday night in December, when the rest of the country is watching England depart the World Cup in the quarter finals.Downstairs at Pizza Express Jazz Dean Street, missed-penalty misery was banished, the snowfall was metaphorical, and the fun to be had was centred around singer Emma Smith, launching her Snowbound record to a full house with a fine quartet behind her, of Hammond organist Ross Stanley, the tasteful licks of guitarist Nick Costly-White, Leo RIchardson’s supple sax Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Actually, Spotify tells me the album I’ve streamed most this year is Motordrome, the third album by Danish pop star MØ. When I reviewed it back in January I was underwhelmed by its doleful moodiness, but, showing how wrong a quick couple of listens can be, something about its vaguely remorseful, indie-tinged, girl-pop melancholy grabbed me deeper than I’d realised and kept drawing me back.Some years, my Album of the Year is clear and obvious. It’s the one that stands head-and-shoulders above the rest, listened to with giddy addiction. 2022 has not been such a year. In all honesty, my Album of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Those old enough will recall Debbie Gibson as a squeaky clean, flash-in-the-pan teen pop star of the late 1980s. She was globe-trottingly huge for a couple of years – a peer of Tiffany “I Think We’re Alone Now” Darwish – but then her star waned. What’s less well-remembered is that she was a self-made creation; she’s still the youngest person to have written, produced and performed a US No. 1 single.Her new Christmas album displays a similar confidence. Unlike most such seasonal outings, dominated by the usual old chestnuts, 10 of its 14 songs are originals, written or co-written by herself. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s Friday night and I’ve finally arrived at 43-year-old French music festival institution Trans Musicales. Due to some dreadful nonsense, it’s taken a 12-hour train journey, two baguettes, one short Stephen King novel, six large beers, a tumbler of Bourbon, and one shuttlebus to place me at the Parc Expo, a series of giant airport hangars that house the majority of musical activity (although there’s a smattering of earlier events in Rennes itself).The music runs from 9.00 pm-ish through to shortly before dawn and Trans Musicales is renowned for ensuring that the nearly 60,000 attendees are Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
You wait a whole decade for an album by UK jazz vocalist Emma Smith to turn up… and then...if not quite two, then one and most of a second (a full album Meshuga Baby, released in June, and this five-track Christmas EP)... turn up.Not that Emma Smith isn’t ever extremely busy and in-demand. Turn the clock way back and she was already singing out in front of big bands from her early teens, she then had the vocalist slot with NYJO, a "chair" once held by Amy Winehouse. Smith has been a regular Puppini Sister for years, and has worked with everyone from Michael Buble, Georgie Fame and Robbie Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Growing up in Sweden, sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg developed ways of combatting the biting cold and bleak darkness of winter. As well as writing during wintertime, they turned to the open landscapes and pervasive desert heat of the USA to inspire their music. Perhaps it is this that brings such a warm sheen to their presence.On a stage ablaze with the iridescent shimmer of a huge sun backdrop, the duo open with “Palomino”, to a retro film screen of horses running free and wild. The Nevada aesthetic continues with “Angel” and “It’s A Shame” accompanied by Super 8-style films of golden Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Descarga Royal" by Los Royal’s de Pucallpa opens proceedings. After flurries of wobbly wah-wah guitar, a driving percussion bed interweaves with a rolling guitar figure. Then, about two minutes in, the guitarist steps on the fuzz pedal. Groovy. Psychedelic too. The band’s name is taken from the tropical east-Perú city of Pucallpa, located on the Amazon tributary river Ucayali.Further in, "Humo En La Selva" by Los Invasores De Progreso is as groovy and also features fuzz guitar along with vocal chants. Progreso is located in inland south-western Perú along the Apurímac, another Amazon Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s only one problem with this album, really – if you can call it a problem – and that’s Chris Isaak’s indelible hint of David Lynch. Thanks to his “Wicked Game” being an integral part of Wild at Heart and creating an ongoing relationship between the singer and director, it’s hard to hear Isaak’s voice without thinking that something deeply disturbing is lurking just beneath the surface of his songs.That makes for a peculiar frisson, because for his Christmas album, Isaak has gone for all-out simple sweetness. He’s always played his rockabilly-country-swing pretty straight Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s nice to come across a Christmas album that more-or-less avoids the usual suspects that tend to appear out of the woodwork at this time of year. Macy Gray’s seasonal offering is just such a beast.There are no poptastic renditions of Christmas carols and certainly none of those hoary rock’n’roll yuletide perennials on Christmas with You. So, neither Noddy Holder nor Roy Wood will be earning any royalties from this set. For, while many artists seem to view the early 1970s as the Golden Age of Christmas Pop, Macy Gray has gone back somewhat further for her winter celebration. In fact, most Read more ...