New music
Liz Thomson
Oy vey. Where to start. This is essentially painful – and I write that knowing that Neil Diamond is a genuinely nice guy and that he is now stricken with Parkinson’s. But there is no way round it: A Neil Diamond Christmas is an auditory assault.I’m not one for Christmas albums. I have Joan Baez’s Noel, a bit of a curate’s egg from the mid-1960s, tastefully arranged by Peter Schickele and featuring Baez’s sublime voice and some truly beautiful moments (“Cantique de Noel” and “Carol of the Birds”) but only because I’m a completist. That is, however, it. I certainly never bought Bob Dylan’s more Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Good things don’t tend to come in slews. Slews seem to be reserved, pretty much exclusively, for the bad stuff: legal issues, school shootings, Christmas albums… And so we come, with aching predictability, to this year’s festive releases. Young at heart if not young in fact, US pop outfit Backstreet Boys have an impressive track record of catchy AF pop tunes under their belt from their 90s heyday. Use that as the sparkly wrapping for some of the biggest hitters in the Yuletide arsenal, and the result should be festive cheer all round, right?Well, let’s have a look… First things first, Read more ...
Tom Carr
We Were Promised Jetpacks is a band name that seems off the cuff at first glance. This could be said for the Scottish indie-rock darlings' latest effort, an EP that reworks some of their record from last year, Enjoy the View – as remixed material may hold lukewarm appeal.But A Complete One-Eighty gave Jetpacks the chance to revisit their first album as a three-piece and push some of the songs in directions they couldn’t previously envision. Though far from a household name, Jetpacks’ sound is unmistakable: soaring guitar chords and leads, thundering drums, full basslines, and Adam Thompson’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When Trevor Beales’s band Havana Lake released their only album in 1977, it was on a label which also issued records by The Ryman Country Band, The Saddleworth Male Voice Choir, The Slaithwaite Brass Band, The Thurlstone Bell Orchestra and a version of Sixties beat band The Merseybeats. Look was the offshoot of West Yorkshire studio September Sound Studios – anyone booked there could have a record pressed as part of the deal.Havana Lake’s CSNY-ish, Lindisfarne-leaning album Concrete Valley had more sympathetic Look Records bedfellows in the country/folk-slanted duo Harmony & Slyde, and Read more ...
joe.muggs
Want an antidote so forced seasonal cheer and the catchiness of Christmas pop? How about some almost entirely atonal drone, clatter and throb with titles like “Fish Death”, “Tales for Violent Days” and “Dissonance Émancipee”?Music presented as a “lucid nightmare” fuelled by “toxic relationships; job insecurity and exploitation; immateriality of the future, translated into frustration, exhaustion/desperation, claustrophobia and a desire to escape; anguish, panic and a sense of powerlessness towards nature and disease”?Well here’s the funny thing: this album by a Rome-based audiovisual artist Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Oh dear. 10 songs of very little consequence. And one which has sparked “controversy”. "I Hate You When You're Drunk" has generated more publicity for Mr Murs than his PR team has mustered for the launch campaign. But it simply doesn’t add up. The lyrics are so utterly at odds with the giddy, lightweight music, it’s as if an AI pop song generator has malfunctioned. Deemed misogynistic by the twiteratti, it’s hard to take offence at something so very lacking in malice. TV’s mister nice guy is, according to the album’s press release, a “solid-gold pop star”. And the figures don’t lie. Read more ...
Cheri Amour
In 2016’s abrasive album opener, "Dead Weight", frontwoman Mish Barber-Way laments over multiple miscarriages as her biological clock ticks away like a malevolent metronome.How much has changed in the last six years, then, and none more so than for Barber-Way. The track in question was taken from the band’s last official release, Paradise. A record that saw Deap Vally’s Lindsey Troy step up as a touring bass player and the Vancouver trio – completed by drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou and guitarist Kenneth William – unintentionally entering into a hiatus.They had every intention of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
This Is What We Do is only Leftfield’s fourth album in a career that has lasted almost 35 years (on and off). But if there is a dance outfit that can demonstrate the worth of quality over quantity, it’s the duo of Neil Barnes and Adam Wren (Barnes’ original partner, Paul Daley jumped ship 20 years ago).By flatly refusing to chase fashion and by maintaining their Progressive House magpie vision, Leftfield have consistently put out tunes, like “Not Forgotten”, “Open Up” and “Afrika Shox” that still pack a punch years after their release and This Is What We Do sees absolutely no drop in the Read more ...
mark.kidel
Justin Adams has been exploring music that produces trance or near-trance states for a number of years. Along with being Robert Plant’s lead guitarist for a long while, he has followed his own path, seeking out what he had dubbed the secret heart of rock’n’roll.For a while he played with the Gambian horsehair fiddle virtuoso Juldeh Camara, creating a heady musical brew designed to blow the most guarded minds. More recently, he has worked with the Italian percussion and violin player Mauro Durante, combining blues licks – as he did with Juldeh – with the whirlwind of rhythm and Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Welcome to the latest edition of Peter Culshaw’s occasional radio show, which normally has a global music focus. This week’s guest for the entire two hours is the musical cult hero and all-round good bloke Lu Edmonds.Lu has an unusual background, being brought up in Moscow and Caracas, and speaks Spanish and Russian. If you want someone with a widescreen take on pop and punk and post-punk music in the last 40 plus years, Lu is uniquely placed. He joined punk pioneers The Damned for the their second album. He’s currently a vocalist, saz and cümbüş player in the Mekons Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Even those with the most tangential connection to pop music will be aware that K-Pop is all conquering, and the likes of BTS and BlackPink are on some metrics the most successful of recent acts anywhere. But at the same time, there is also a growing awareness that there is a burgeoning Korean indie and art music scene, the flames of which have been fanned by what has become one of London’s most interesting and enterprising annual festivals, K-Music.This year's K-Music had another bumper crop of talent, the most intriguing being Park Jiha, a Korean multi-instrumentalist who creates immensely Read more ...
mark.hudson
Looking back on the most exciting, atmospheric and musically challenging gigs I’ve seen to date, there are several contenders in each category. But for the distinction of THE MOST DISTURBING GIG I’VE EVER BEEN TO there is only one possible option: the night in autumn 1973 when I saw a band called Dr Feelgood supporting Ducks Deluxe, a bluesy soully pub rock band in – of all places – Surbiton Assembly Rooms.The NME, then the Bible of pop, were talking up Pub Rock, a back-to-basics, real music in small venues movement, as the thing of the moment, and a bunch of us from school, maybe six, went Read more ...