indie
Owen Richards
Oh to be inside the head of Wayne Coyne. The frazzle-haired frontman has always been an enigma, persistently quirky, morally dubious, and undeniably fascinating. Perhaps King’s Mouth offers our best chance yet to get in there – the album is an accompaniment to his art installation in which visitors enter a giant metallic head. Rather on the nose for a metaphor, but still a hell of an invitation.King’s Mouth is as conceptual as an album gets: a fairytale about a giant baby that becomes king, sacrifices himself for the city, and becomes a monument. Full marks for imagination, the medieval Read more ...
Katie Colombus
It’s a rare thing that musicians sound better live than they do on Spotify. But Florence Welch sings a note perfect set – even when jumping up and down like a pogo stick, whirling and spinning, or sprinting along the front of the stage to meet fans.Shining with androgynous, enigmatic beauty, she opens with the dramatic “June”, the line “hold on to each other” sung with gravitas as she stands on a tree-cloaked stage beneath the open sky. It’s a message that resonates from the onset – you can feel it, the connection with her hometown audience – the same way Flo seems to be feeling the crowd Read more ...
Owen Richards
With the fabled fields of Glastonbury on the horizon, The Killers chose the equally mythic Cardiff Castle as their practice run. While Stormzy was making history on the Pyramid Stage, the Welsh capital played witness to a precision-engineered pop-rock spectacular, complete with pyros and an extravagant light show. Well, if you can’t make history, make memories.They began big with a one-two punch of first-album bangers. “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” led straight into “Mr Brightside”, a power play to drop their generational lads anthem so early, but it mainlined adrenaline straight through the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Releasing this record must be a daunting process for Steve Clarke. For one, it's his first record as a frontman and main songwriter, after a lifetime as a jobbing bassist and tour manager. For two it's a collaboration with his wife – they've been married a year, and together for five – and isn't shy of expressing the hopes and fears of an evolving relationship. But perhaps most potentially intimidating for Clarke, his wife is Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, one of the most distinctive sounding UK bands of recent decades, so it's inevitable her presence will generate attention and draw comparisons Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
So theartsdesk on Vinyl reaches its 50th edition. That’s at least a novels’ worth of words. Maybe two! But we’re not stopping yet. The heat of the summer has arrived but the vinyl deluge hasn’t dried up, so check in for everything from Germanic electro to Scottish Seventies pop-rock to Japanese minyo music reimagined. And much more. All vinyl life is here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHQuantic Atlantic Oscillations (Tru Thoughts)Will Holland – Quantic – has spent the past few years successfully indulging in his penchant for South American, living there and recording a multiplicity of releases Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
With her timeless vocals and jazz-inflected folk melodies, it feels like a bit of Los Angeles songwriter Bedouine lives in the golden age of Hollywood. It’s a dichotomy she goes as far as to address on “Echo Park”, a woozy Sunday morning wander through one of the city’s more bohemian neighbourhoods whose melody - and observationally poetic lyrics - draw from the Joni Mitchell playbook. “I’ll stay as long as I don’t tire from the rising cost of coffee,” she confesses. “The skyline’s inching higher, but the sights are free.”Born in Aleppo, Syria, Azniv Korkejian has been a US resident since her Read more ...
joe.muggs
Nineteen years, seven albums and untold side projects into their career, Hot Chip have for the first time enlisted outside producers: Rodaidh McDonald and French disco/house don Philippe Zdar. And it's worked. Over the course of the previous albums, the band had steadily evolved from ramshackle and rather self-consciously quirky writers and players to a far slicker operation. Notably this was informed by Alexis Taylor's broadening as a songwriter through various experiments and collaborations, and Joe Goddard's deep immersion in bittersweet deep house music, both solo and in 2 Bears – but the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If contemplated without a context, Loops in the Secret Society initially appears to be a bold 68-minute, double-album fusion of Hawkwind’s hum and whir, Krautrock insistence, spacey electronica and folky otherness. Jane Weaver’s voice is disembodied, as if in a trance. As one track bleeds into another, ambient linking pieces instil the feeling this is more a lengthy mood piece rather than a series of individual compositions. If the soundtrack were needed to a flickering silent film about artificial creatures escaping from underworld bondage and emerging into the daylight, this is it.However, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Nothing brings home the difference between sequencing an album and sequencing a live show like going to see a classic album played in its entirety. And Manic Street Preachers’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours – described by frontman James Dean Bradfield in Edinburgh as “a curious mixture of dancing and thinking” – is a stranger choice than most for the live treatment. The five-million-plus selling, multi-award winning album, the 20th anniversary of which the band are currently celebrating, is objectively their biggest release. Look beyond the singles, though, and its songs are arguably Read more ...
Owen Richards
Blessed with a red sunset and an adoring crowd, Noel Gallagher brought life to the ruins of Cardiff Castle. With support from fellow 90s alumnus Gaz Coombes, and Wales’s next-gen prodigies Boy Azooga and Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, the evening provided a winning mini-festival affair.From first striding onto the stage, there was no denying that Gallagher is at home on stages this size. He possessed a knowing confidence as he broke into recent rock-pop single “Holy Mountain”, throwing cheeky shapes at opportune moments and always half a minute away from pointing a finger toward the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
At its best, the music of Glasgow band Honeyblood often sounded like a girl gang you weren’t cool enough to be a part of - making the news that singer-guitarist Stina Tweeddale had split with drummer Cat Myers and recast the name as that of a solo project an intriguing prospect. The Honeyblood of In Plain Sight is no less raucous than that of the previous two albums under the name, with a cast of skilled - if anonymous - musicians and US indie super-producer John Congleton on hand to deliver Tweeddale’s garage rock visions. If the result is a little more focused, a little less charming - well Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Primal Scream have played in this city, in the recent past, at the 4,500 capacity Brighton Centre but tonight they’re in a venue which holds well under 400. A bananas atmosphere reigns when bands of their stature play intimate shows, and so it is tonight. When frontman Bobby Gillespie leads the group on and asks the crowd to join in with their 1991 classic “Movin’ On Up”, they respond as if going into the encore, a mass roared chorus. The evening seems to peak at its start but then maintains that level of excitement throughout.This a warm-up for forthcoming gigs and festival appearances to Read more ...