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Adam Sweeting
Exactly how Ronnie Wood has reached the age of 79, after decades of rock’n’roll debauchery with the Faces and the Rolling Stones and surviving cancer twice, passeth all understanding. He even seems to have managed to hang on to a full head of hair, though advanced tonsorial technology may have had a part to play here. Anyway, here he is back on stage with the band he calls AMMO, and kicking off a tour which will take him all around Europe before he nips over to South America for some more dates.This curtain-raiser in Kentish Town revealed a few loose ends and rough edges, with missed cues and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
At the Dot To Dot Festival in Nottingham, back in May, I noticed some of the most exciting bands I caught were marinated in grunge. One of them was Grandmas House. Their debut album now arrives and the grunge element turns out to be only part of the deal. The queer Bristol femme-punkin’ quartet try on various musical hats but, even at their poppiest, maintain a creeping sense of threat.Their lead weapon is the rasping voice of singer-guitarist Yasmin Berndt, whose vocals sound like no-one else around, a death metal growl plastered around a tone somewhere between Karen O and Scott Weiland. Yes Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Just over 24 hours before Idlewild stepped out at the Kelvingrove Bandstand, the much ballyhooed solar eclipse had proved a damp squib for much of Scotland, with cloudy weather obscuring any views. With inevitable irony, the following day brought clear skies and sunshine, meaning the audience for this outdoor Glasgow show were basking in brightness and warmth for the arrival of Roddy Woomble and company, a band now holding indie veteran status.Sadly the good weather did not massively help support act Sorren Maclean, a well kent face in Scottish music. His low-key set, built around trad Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Comparatively speaking, Rotherham appears in the news more than most British towns of an equivalent size. And much of that news is not good. Much of it is representative of poverty, social disenfranchisement, and the ugly face of flag-waving Britain. But self-released, 2020s grass roots indie rockers The Reytons offer a reminder of working class community power, a band who hark back to the days when the only way out of big city estates was through football and pop.Their last couple of albums (of four, including this one), made it to No.1 and No.2 in the UK album charts, respectively. This Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHJohn R Miller The Great Unknowing (Rounder)
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John R Miller’s youth was spent in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, an area where he imbibed Americana-folk fiddle music and began his career. The fiddles are mostly long gone but the feel of them is retained on The Great Unknowing, his fifth album. Miller combines raw country songwriting with a rough-edged bar-blues guitar twang. His voice is world-weary and his songwriting literate but catchy, dosed up on the blackly humorous cynicism found in the best country music Read more ...
Tom Carr
If there is only one artist who you could say is in their moment, then it would be hard to look past Charli XCX. Having set in motion a whole cultural zeitgeist with previous album Brat, the pop and dance extraordinaire has forayed into fashion and film, lending to the score of Emerald Fennel’s take on Wuthering Heights last year. With seemingly the world at her beck and call, Charli could have gone in any direction for album seven. Having conquered the mainstream with Brat, marrying electropop with dance and rave to wide acclaim, the easy choice could have been to return to that well Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mould are a post-punk sounding trio from Bristol. The press release says that their debut album is “13 tracks that explore the horrors of the outside world and the internal minefield of the brain”. A nice description, and very post-COVID in aspect. Also correct. The lyrics are the best thing about Hoping as a Coping Mechanism, born of prosaic nihilism and boredom, with a seasoning of desperation.Musically, Mould’s angular energy makes up for what they lack in musical originality, and the whole thing is done in about 35 minutes so they don’t outstay their welcome. They veer from harsh Idles- Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The World Cup is everywhere in Scotland these days, even among the country’s gigging venues. Rolled up Saltires were visible on the balconies of the O2 Academy, a reminder that the Glasgow venue is hosting watch parties for the national team’s matches, and when Lola Young came back onstage for the encore she was serenaded by fans belting out “no Scotland no party”, to which the Londoner cheerfully joined in.Roughly an hour earlier, the 25-year-old had walked out to the sort of wild reaction that greeted John McGinn hitting the back of the net against Haiti, with screams and hollers from the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Nottingham is broiling. With sun heat. And with humanity. The pubs overspill beyond the pavement, into the road, as hordes of Nottingham Forest fans prepare for the final game of the season, sinking gallons of carbonated amber liquid. Unrelated, in Old Market Square a sizeable gaggle of the ill-informed and ham-faced, waving England flags, face off against a counter-demonstration, divided by ranks of fluorescent police. And every available venue is hosting Dot To Dot, a festival showcasing fresh musical talent.Begun in 2005, Dot To Dot is a multi-venue affair, like Camden Crawl or The Great Read more ...
Ibi Keita
In 1999, American Football pioneered a brand-new genre with their self-titled album, and while they didn’t gain much recognition from their odd style of music, it soon grew into something beautiful, widely loved and imitated. Midwest-Emo is a genre that relies on the foundations that American Football set on that record, a slurry of twinkly melodies and precise, often off beat rhythms, I personally think it’s beautiful mess, but unsurprisingly, it’s an acquired taste. Vocals are the third piece to the Midwest-Emo puzzle, always conversational, strained and unbothered, almost shouted from Read more ...
Katie Colombus
In an era of excessive production for live shows, it is striking to see a band of Big Thief’s stature walk onto a stage this large and offer almost nothing but the songs themselves. No grand entrance, no visual shenanigans, no swag. Just four musicians, a handful of instruments, and darn good songs. But then their appeal has always lain elsewhere – in the frayed and tender edges of their songs, in the way they can make the intimate feel infinite, and the infinite feel as ordinary as a dirt road at dusk. At Brixton, that same hum of nonchalant chill settled over the evening. They came on Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mille Petrozza was born in 1967 to a Calabrian father, and a mother who was a refugee from Communist East Germany. He grew up in the Altenessen district of Essen, in Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley, where his father worked in the coal mines. As a young teenager, inspired by a KISS concert, he and school friends Jürgen "Ventor" Reil (drums) and Rob Fioretti (bass) started a band.By 1984, after going by various names, the band was called Kreator, with Petrozza the frontman and rhythm guitarist. Their raw 1985 debut album Endless Pain was followed by 1986’s seismic Pleasure to Kill. The latter Read more ...