indie
Thomas H. Green
There will be two theartsdesk on Vinyls this week. The first is here, an epic 11,000 words on a multitude of new releases in every genre, from reissues of classics to spanking new strangeness. There’s something for everyone. On Thursday we’ll have a special edition in honour of Record Store Day this coming Saturday, so watch out for that too. For now, though, dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHElsa Bergman Playon Crayon (B.Inspelningar)In the mid-1960s British composer and pal of Stockhausen, Cornelius Cardew, composed a piece called Treatise whose sheet music consisted of a series of symbolic Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Lucy Farrell has a singular voice, contained and controlled but subtle and expressive. Since graduating from Newcastle’s folk course in the noughties she’s performed and recorded as a duo with Jonny Kearney, as one quarter of the BBC Folk Award-winning Furrow Collective, alongside further musical adventures with Carthy, Oates, Farrell & Young, and Eliza Carthy’s Wayward Band.Now she is releasing her long-awaited solo album of original songs, recorded at Wenlock Abbey in Much Wenlock, home to actress Gabrielle Drake, sister of Nick. It was his piano and guitar that were used in these Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It is temping to wonder what path the Orielles would have gone down in a world where the coronavirus never occurred. The Halifax trio had just released their second album, Disco Volador when the pandemic struck, and wiped out any hope of touring the record. Instead they reworked material from the record for use scoring a film, and have now returned with last year’s Tableau album as a significantly different beast.That was evident all throughout this set in Glasgow, the final night of their UK tour. When they finally played a track from their first record Silver Dollar Moment, dropping in Read more ...
Cheri Amour
This is technically Leslie Feist’s first release since 2018’s Pleasure. But that doesn't mean the Canadian songwriter has been resting on her laurels.In the five-year period, she’s stepped into the role of solo parenthood by adopting her daughter Tihui, relocated to Toronto, and launched a chart-topping podcast series, Pleasure Studies. All this during a global pandemic that’s thrown the art industry into a bin fire.Accolades and adoption process aside, something else was percolating in the ether though. During the first lockdown, the musician found herself more productive than ever. As she Read more ...
Cheri Amour
Maybe you’ve heard the Native American parable about the two wolves. An old Cherokee’s grandson is grappling with internal tensions; self-hatred and self-aggrandising. For Phoebe Bridgers, one-third of indie supergroup boygenius (usually styled with no initial capital letter), this analogy sits at the heart of album standout ‘Not Strong Enough’. In it, the trio, completed by Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, let out the divine line “Always an angel / Never a god,” adding a wry smile to the delivery.Subverting male hero worship is one of the (many) things that’s so refreshingly brilliant about a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As Inspiral Carpets play “She Comes in the Fall”, a great song and one of their signature tunes, its martial drumming drags me into my own past. Seeing them play it at a 600-capacity venue makes me recall seeing them, over three decades ago, headlining the Reading Festival and, indeed, their own festival-style event at Alexandra Palace, when a female marching band would come onstage during this song. They were huge news then.There’s no marching band in 2023 but the song is still delivered with raucous punch that has the sold-out Concorde 2 loudly matching singer Stephen Holt on the choruses. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Compared to her peers, Lana del Rey is mightily prolific. This is her eighth album since her breakthough 11 years ago (her ninth in total). Her last album appeared 15 months ago. There’s still much she wants us to hear. Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is an hour-and-a-quarter long. It sprawls. It could do with an edit, but as so often when talented musicians sprawl, there are also gems.The mood of the album is mostly built around stunningly deft piano, presumably from her usual keys person Byron Thomas. Many of the tracks are becalmed, delicate things. There’s a section of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s a disconnect on the third album by Brighton rockers Black Honey. The music is rousing post-grunge indie rock, tuneful, full of vim, but the lyrics speak of someone deeply troubled. The mood is, perhaps, best summed up by “Rock Bottom” which states, “Rock bottom – but the floor keeps dropping.” The whole album is mired in similar mind-strife.Singer Izzy Bee Phillips has said as much of the incongruously named A Fistful of Peaches, stating, “Most of this record is me trying to figure out where the line is between normal mental health and when you’re having breakdowns every day that then Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Jon Savage's 1980-1982 - The Art Of Things To Come continues a series which began in 2015 with 1966 - The Year The Decade Exploded, a compilation springing off from Savage’s book of the same name. A follow-up looked at 1965, but after that the series has marched forward chronologically.This new 35-track double CD set – as before, the tracks are from singles rather than albums – follows seven compilations dedicated 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969-1971, 1972-1976 and, most recently, Jon Savage's 1977-1979 - Symbols Clashing. Together, they chronicle Savage’s take on popular music from the beat- Read more ...
joe.muggs
One of the greatest things a musical artist can achieve is world building. That is, creating a distinctive type of environment, language and coordinates for everything they do such that the listener is forced to come into the musical world, and to engage with it on its own terms rather than by comparison. It’s something that musicians as diverse as Prince, Kate Bush and Wu-Tang Clan achieve have achieved, likewise plenty of more underground creators too.Belgian polymath Marc Hollander has achieved this in particularly special way. Over more than 45 years, he’s built his sonic world not only Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Although We Are Scientists onstage chat is always delivered with a light touch, there is truth running through it as well. Early on at this set their singer and guitarist Keith Murray quipped that he wouldn’t be needing his lucky charm for the evening, and in a way he was right.If the UK has always been the New Yorkers' adopted home, then Glasgow in particular is a welcoming host, and by the end of this 90-minute performance the crowd was a bouncing, singing congregation, eagerly taking a trip down memory lane.However that doesn’t mean the actual show was a resounding success, even if Murray Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Steve Mason has been impressively blunt about the inspiration behind his fifth solo album. “To me, this record is a massive “Fuck you” to Brexit and a giant “Fuck you” to anyone that is terrified of immigration,” he’s said, “Because there is nothing that immigration has brought to this country that isn’t to be applauded.” Thus, these 12 songs are riven not only with lyrical pith but also sounds borrowed from an international sound palette.The combination leavens his anger with the spiritual uplift of righteous protest. Mason has always been creatively restless, right from when the Beta Band Read more ...