country
Jasper Rees
Twenty years ago Mary Chapin Carpenter used to sing about loving and losing, but also about lusting. Even her ballads went at a bullish lick. The essence of what she had to say was distilled in “He Thinks He'll Keep Her”, which captured the emotions of a 35-year-old woman at the moment she realises her marriage is a dead duck. Here was a Nashville grandee who, rather than standing by her man, stood up for herself. Her feminist folk preeminence has helped Carpenter to sales of 12 million albums.Ruined romance is still on the agenda in Ashes and Roses, but this time Carpenter is nowhere near Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's easy to forget exactly how successful Norah Jones is, but with over 50 million records sold, she is a modern success up there with the Jay-Zs of this world. To see her come on stage last night, though, you wouldn't have known it. There were no fireworks, no build-up of drama, no crazed intro tape, no MC on stage to announce her entrance, just a band and singer walking on stage to play. Then again, that kind of matches the way Jones came into the public sphere, really: her breeze-light songs wafting into the collective consciousness without warning or ceremony, and then just staying there Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
In a members-only bowling club, down a side street in a residential part of Glasgow I'd never visited before last night, Texan fiddle-player and songwriter Amanda Shires stood wearing the most magnificent pair of cowboy boots I had ever seen.They were a well-worn grey, decorated with the same f-shaped slots as her own instrument, and complete with giant silver buckles that made a satisfying jingle like heavy-duty sleigh bells when she stamped her feet hard enough to be her own backing track. They remind me of a shop sign I saw in Nashville once, offering "two free" when you bought one pair of Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Nothing tests an artist’s mettle more severely than having to negotiate a full-blown case of tech-horror. Half way through the third number last night, a particularly sweet version of “Summer Morning Rain“, an ear-scorching sonic car crash brought everything skidding to a decidedly ugly halt. Simone Felice leapt from his chair like a scalded cat and muttered something about lawyers. For a moment I thought he was actually going to scarper. And it had all started so well.Formerly of The Felice Brothers and The Duke & The King, on record Felice is in the process of shedding musical skins, Read more ...
joe.muggs
Welcome to theartsdesk's first radio show with Peter Culshaw and Joe Muggs, recorded with the extremely able help of Brendon Harding at Red Bull Studio London.In the course of this show, Peter and Joe take a look at the depth and breadth of music covered by theartsdesk, playing some delicious tracks just out or about to be released (see below), and discussing the meaning of musical genre in a globalised world and asking whether it is still a useful way of bracketing artists. In amongst this you can hear an interview with the young Soweto-born musician Spoek Mathambo, now mainly residing Read more ...
Tim Cumming
He has been called “America’s sharpest musical storyteller” by Rolling Stone, and has enough talent to give Bob Dylan’s talking blues a run for their money. The East Nashville-based singer-songwriter, guitarist, yarn-spinner, troubadour and amiably agnostic stoner has 10 new stories on his 14th album, the title of which acts as a pretty accurate calling card for the Snider experience: Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables. He’s also got a raw new band behind him, at the same time as strapping on an electric guitar, blowing a mean, distorted harp through a handheld mic, and delivering some of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Civil Wars are one of those bands rendered suddenly white hot in the UK by a classy performance on Later with Jools Holland. They’re a photogenic country-ish acoustic singer-songwriter pairing whose style is just un-country enough to fit neatly alongside James Morrison on Home Counties i-players, but whose very, very faint tint of Deep South gothic also has the hipsters intrigued. They have sold out the Shepherds Bush Empire tonight and arrive on stage to enthused applause and yells of appreciation. The crowd are in their early thirties and upwards, straight-looking, and they love this Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“I know what I was angry about when I wrote this,” Nanci Griffith told the crowd as she introduced “Hell No (I’m Not Alright)”, “but you can get your anger out about whatever you want.”It seemed a little odd that Griffith left the big hook (if the bold, sloganned t-shirts of the crowd are anything to be believed) from new album Intersection until after the house lights came back up for the first time, but back in her native America the song can lead to pandemonium. Delivered with gusto, complete with synchronised clapping from two burly roadies in matching sunglasses, its lyrics are not Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When an artist releases an album of new readings of old material, there’s usually cause for concern. But not with Lionel Richie’s new release, a foray into light country. In fact, given Richie’s recent efforts to stay down with the kids, maybe he should have tapped his archive before. Here he’s teamed up with (mainly) young country stars to rework his greatest hits with an Alabama radio pulse. The arrangements may sound crisp and contemporary, but the real fun comes from wallowing in the past and remembering Lionel’s evergreen Eighties.There are a couple of hiccups. But just that. One of Read more ...
joe.muggs
Tonight on Channel 4, a new music series begins with a fantastic premise. A group of music obsessives drive around the USA in a London black cab, finding interesting musicians and recording them performing and talking in the back of the cab. Sounds a little bit like the 2008 Stephen Fry in America series, doesn't it? Well maybe, except Black Cab Sessions has been broadcast online since 2007.Watch the Black Cab Sessions trailer:And there's the rub. BCS has now featured hundreds of acts in various cabs, from complete unknowns to top ten-bothering popstars, from gangsta rappers to Brian Read more ...