guitar
Kieron Tyler
Its Dali-esque sleeve image captures Goes West perfectly. Over its 10 instrumental tracks, the music drifts inwards from outside as if introducing the endless open space of an intensely lit desert. There’s a sadness-tinged reflectiveness too; one which could bring on tears and induce a need to look heavenwards for support.Goes West is the fourth solo album from William Tyler, the guitarist in Lambchop and Silver Jews. He’s set his electric guitar aside for this acoustic-bedded set. A full band accompanies him and Bill Frisell guests on the final cut, “Our Lady of the Desert”. John Fahey Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Take a deep breath and surround yourself with some comfortable furnishings before hitting play on this one. Yawn, recorded by Bill at his West Kirby studio of the same name, is just beautiful: a word that’s overused, but feels totally apt in this case. The album hums with emotion, fragility rippling throughout. Classically informed motifs punctuate sad, grizzly guitar, his barely-there voice a close whisper.Subjects are poignant, universal, finding the intensity in the everyday, and many songs clock in at five minutes or more, giving each idea plenty of breathing room. Uninhibited outros are Read more ...
Joe Muggs
“I don't peak early / I don't peak at all,” goes the wryly self-aware line in the opening song here, “Take me to the Movies”. Thirty-five years since he started releasing records, Mascis isn't interested in peaking, progress or much else beyond delivering the same he always has.Weary, anhedonic introversion delivered in a cracked Neil Young moan, and primal blues rock guitar soloing, are packed into perfect pop structures with pithy or heartstring-tugging couplets that twinkle like a razor sharp intelligence shining out from behind heavy lidded eyes. The differences between Dinosaur albums Read more ...
theartsdesk
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why. Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brillianceBob Dylan - More Blood, More Tracks ★★★★★ The fourteenth volume in the Bootleg Series is a keeperBrad Mehldau Trio - Seymour Reads the Constitution! ★★★★★ Prolific improvising pianist creates the apotheosis of the piano trioThe Breeders - All Nerve ★★★★★ Kim and Kelly Deal - plus Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s been a tough few years for Sŵn Festival. Once a genuine rival to fellow urban festivals Great Escape and Sound City, recent events have fluctuated between one-dayers and a string of ticketed gigs. 2018 marked the biggest change yet, but also a return to the multi-day, multi-venue format. Founders Huw Stephens and John Rostron announced they were handing over the reigns to Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff’s leading music venue. This fresh injection of enthusiasm and experience was just what the festival needed. This year, Sŵn was spread over four days: large single gigs on Wednesday and Read more ...
Ralph Moore
A three-hour show? There’s no doubt that The Smashing Pumpkins give good bang for the buck but it’s rare to see a band of this size and stature play for more than two hours in London. So it’s a testament to their back catalogue that at the SSE Wembley Arena those three hours fly by faster than the college years soundtracked by the Pumpkins at their absolute peak in the mid-Nineties. And while frontman Billy Corgan’s toured the band with a younger bunch of musicians, this is the first time that guitarist James Iha has rejoined the fold in almost two decades.This means songs like “Blew Away” Read more ...
David Nice
First it was the soft acoustic guitar playing, which on three occasions to three very different audiences won a silence so intense it was almost deafening. Then the loud electric, first heard in Anstruther's Dreel Halls as part of the 2017 East Neuk Festival; the ear-plugs we were given at the door proved unnecessary – just – but the shock of Julia Wolfe's LAD, transferred from nine bagpipes to Sean Shibe live alongside eight recorded selves, was massive.There's more than a touch of creative genius in all this, and as Graham Rickson confirmed in this week’s Classical CDs Roundup on Read more ...
graham.rickson
Jãnis Ivanovs: Symphony No. 5; Juris Karlsons: Music for Symphony Orchestra 1945 Latvian National Symphony Orchestra/Andris Poga (Skani)Jãnis Ivanovs’ promising conducting career was kyboshed by the outbreak of war and the Soviet invasion of Latvia. After Riga’s liberation in October 1944, it's believed that Ivanovs was responsible for broadcasting one of the five surviving records belonging to the reactivated state radio station, and his Symphony No. 5 was completed during the following spring. Asked about the symphony's meaning, Ivanovs replied that the music “contained everything Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Bananas is Malcolm Middleton’s first solo album to be built around guitar, bass, drums and all that stuff since 2009’s gorgeous Waxing Gibbous. Like any great artist, he soon became bored with pursuing the classic formulation that made his name (post-Arab Strap). He’s spent the last few years trying new ideas instead. His last album, Summer of ’13, was his take on electropop, there’s his Human Don’t Be Angry experimental albums and a collaboration with the artist David Shrigley. On Bananas, however, those who’ve been pining for his classic sound are rewarded.Middleton is a wordsmith, striking Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
IDLES' debut album, Brutalism, exploded onto the UK post-punk scene last year, lauded by the music press (myself included) for its lyrical blend of charm, fury, and politics, and musically, for just being a refreshingly original and catchy punk album. While IDLES haven’t moved away from these things on Joy as an Act of Resistance, they've branched out in some different, exciting directions.Taking their cues from the album title, singles “Danny Nedelko” and “Great” are possibly the poppiest songs IDLES have ever written, approaching racism, immigration and Brexit from an utterly danceable, Read more ...
Joe Muggs
This album starts on a slightly odd footing, thanks to the opener “As a Man” having phrases that sound by turns a lot like Propellorheads and Shirley Bassey's “History Repeating” and Grace Jones's cover of Flash And The Pan's “Walking in the Rain”. Not that those are bad records – both are still highly playable – and it certainly sets a tone of arch assurance and cabaret sass. But being reminded so early of such entirely distinctive and out-on-their-own tracks makes it a little hard to triangulate where Calvi is coming from here.As on previous records, there's a great degree of classicism Read more ...
Owen Richards
The most famous face in musical history, and perhaps the instigator of modern culture as we know it; he truly was the King. But for a documentary focused on such an icon, The King touches very little on Elvis Presley the man. This is not another biography on America’s first son, but a study on the persona, the myth and the brand that was created around him.Everyone has their own idea of who he was: the hip-swivelling rebel, the military hero, the irresistible leading man, the grotesque Vegas attraction. He was, in every complex and contradictory way, the living embodiment of the United States Read more ...