guitar
CD: Pete Fij/Terry Bickers - We Are MillionairesMonday, 10 July 2017
To anyone other than Eighties and Nineties indie obsessives, the guitarist from The House of Love and Levitation and the singer from Adorable getting together in 2014 did not cause a stir. However, both had stylistically leapt away from their pasts... Read more... |
CD: Justin Adams featuring Anneli Drecker - RibbonsThursday, 15 June 2017
Rarely has an album’s artwork better reflected its content: blackness, or the void from which light occasionally emanates. This is a collection of instrumentals enhanced by vocals, rather than what might be called songs. The opening minimalist piece... Read more... |
CD: Ride - Weather DiariesSaturday, 10 June 2017
In 1990, Ride were in the first wave of the Shoegazing scene to get out of the blocks and into the studio to record their iconic debut EP. Four albums and a sack load of EPs and singles later, however, they called it a day and the four lads from... Read more... |
CD: Imelda May - Life. Love. Flesh. BloodWednesday, 05 April 2017
As Imelda May releases her fifth CD, it can’t but help that Bob Dylan has come out as a fan – it was, she wrote, "like being kissed by Apollo himself". No doubt his buddy T Bone Burnett passed him a copy of the album, for he produced it in Los... Read more... |
CD: Tamikrest - KidalWednesday, 08 March 2017
Tamikrest’s fourth album is well-presented, good enough, but a little hamstrung by what have become the clichés of the modern Touareg genre: the lilting rhythms of a camel cruising slowly across the dunes, intertwined guitars that smoothly swirl... Read more... |
Josh Ritter, St Stephen's ChurchSaturday, 18 February 2017
The only British gig in Josh Ritter’s so-called work-in-progress tour took place in the somewhat unlikely venue of St Stephen’s Church, Shepherd’s Bush, a rather fine example of gothic revival style. It’s almost opposite Bush Hall, which would have... Read more... |
CD: John Mayall - Talk About ThatSunday, 22 January 2017
In the era of star-making TV progs and here-today-gone-tomorrow musicians, just how wonderful is it to have a new album from a man who marked his 80th birthday three years ago by signing a new contract with Eric Corne’s Forty Below Records?John... Read more... |
10 Questions for Singer Fantastic NegritoWednesday, 14 September 2016
Fantastic Negrito, aka Xavier Dphrepaulezz, is a singer from Oakland, California. His music is steeped in the raw and urgent spirituality of the early blues, especially Robert Johnson. Yet he refuses to be pigeonholed as a blues performer,... Read more... |
CD: Dinosaur Jr - Give a Glimpse of What Yer NotThursday, 04 August 2016
In an age where things change at a lightning pace, where we are programmed for progress, touchstones are crucial. There’s a need for something we can rely on to remain solid, unchanging and free of the burden of momentum. The noise produced by... Read more... |
Guitar Star, Sky Arts / Outcast, FoxWednesday, 15 June 2016
The guitar, the "little orchestra" beloved of Andrés Segovia, is an instrument for all seasons, and for venues from salons to stadiums. It isn't exactly the same instrument in all cases, of course. Comparing the traditional acoustic Spanish guitar... Read more... |
CD: RM Hubbert - Telling the TreesSunday, 24 April 2016
In interviews, the Scottish songwriter RM Hubbert has described his new album as being the “mirror image” of his best-known work, the 2013 Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award-winning Thirteen Lost and Found. Like that album, Telling the Trees is... Read more... |
Prince, 1958-2016Friday, 22 April 2016
Prince Rogers Nelson was the most gloriously disruptive presence in popular culture from the very start to the very end. Everything about him was off kilter and wrong: it's not for nothing that the first major biography of him was called The Imp of... Read more... |
