pop music
Kathryn Reilly
As a disillusioned ex-admirer – like so many – it’s with a degree of dread that I approach Morrissey’s 14th solo album (the first for six years) not least because of the positively Kafkaesque struggle to actually hear it. But an open mind is necessary.What if there were no axe to grind? What if the hopeless search for love had been answered? What if there were no conspiracy theories? Why, then, there would be no new album (and – let’s face it – we’re all thigh-high in conspiracy theories right now). So we must buckle up and hear what the once-great man has to opine. The hilarious album Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
When David Byrne made a mention of heroes and superheroes, one audience member could not resist. "Like you" they yelled out, and while the former Talking Heads singer might not be able to leap buildings in a single bound, his current creative hot streak is a nifty power indeed. Several years on from his terrific American Utopia tour, and Byrne is back on the road with a 12-piece backing band and a seemingly empty stage. To begin with, he was joined by only three musicians for a pared back "Heaven", the Talking Heads track from 1979, but it wasn't long until more and more started arriving Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
CMAT knows how to make an entrance. The opening of this show, in common with the rest of her tour, featured her band assembling onstage before a spotlight was suddenly shone on the back of the room – and there was Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, in a vivid green outfit and snazzy spectacles, standing on a raised section usually home to seats.It was a fitting entrance that could have nestled on the silver screen alongside the varied tunes from films played over the PA before the gig started. Thompson is an undoubted star these days, a charismatic and energetic mega watt performer. This gig, part of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Squeeze have done well. They’ve worked their arses off for years and now have significant profile again, playing some of Europe’s bigger venues (such as the O2). Their latest release, then, is anticipated. It’s a fanciful rejig of a concept album the band’s central duo, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, created, pre-success, when they were teenagers in 1974. For both better and worse, it sounds that way.Trixies offers 13 snapshots of an imaginary nightclub, much flavoured by Difford’s youthful reading of Damon Runyon’s New York nightworld tales, mingled with the lowlife of their native south Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title comes from the August 1965 Paul Revere & the Raiders single “Steppin' Out,” a paint-peeling stomp which just missed the US Top 40. While it wasn’t a massive hit – a UK release made no mark at all – the track can be taken as helping to define a strand of American pop which is, well, identifiably American. It didn’t matter that “Steppin' Out” was released by a major label: it’s directness, heft, reductiveness, snotiness, unbridled pep and lack of sophistication positioned it as garage rock.“Steppin' Out” is one of the great Sixties singles. So are The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHWest Virginia Snake Handler Revival They Shall Take Up the Serpents (Sublime Frequencies)
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Californian producer Ian Brennan walks, loosely speaking, in the footsteps of groundbreaking (and controversial) father and son song collectors, John and Alan Lomax, who, between them, gathered an essential storehouse of American folk music in the early-to-mid-20th Century. Like them, he’s interested in the cultural context of roots music and he’s ranged across the world, from Rwanda to Azerbaijan. His recent 2023 Parchman Prison Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When the debut album by ex-Little Mix star Leigh-Anne Pinnock starts, the omens are good. The opener, “Look into My Eyes”, is an electro-pop stonker with a roots reggae break at its close. So far, so tasty. Cast eyes down the track-listing and the majority of songs come in at under three minutes. Often a good sign, indicating a willingness to cut flab, keep things snappy. Such positivity lasts for a few songs, but then the album, unfortunately, settles to a bland amalgam of reggaeton and R&B that’s less persuasive.The consistent nod towards Pinnock’s Caribbean heritage is the most Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Although the Beaches may hail from Toronto, they evidently have more Scottish connections than many bands that come this way. Drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel announced early on that she got her very first tattoo on a visit to Oban around a decade ago, but this was trumped by guitarist Leandra Earl recalling she lost her virginity in Dundee.The chap in question was not only apparently in the audience for this show, but also the only man Earl ever enjoyed sleeping with. This declaration was made before the group played one of the night’s few slow songs, the keyboard led “Lesbian of the Year”, Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There are always a few drawbacks to being a support act. For Allie X, the biggest issue was simply finding space to stand onstage, with so much ground already filled with covered up props for the night’s headliners. Still, she made a good effort with what she had, working the crowd well, and the clattering electro-pop of “Super Duper Party People” and a wickedly noisy “Off With Her Tits” carried enough verve by themselves that no stage craft was needed.Magdalena Bay had plenty of those songs too, but accompanied them with a stage décor that appeared to be aiming for the stars, or the moons. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For Richard Hawley, a “little banger” is a top-notch single, one condensing everything about the performance and performer into what can he held on one side of a seven-incher. A flab-free, power-packed record. And it’s a mark of his discrimination that anything fitting the bill is a grade-A killer.Little Bangers From Richard Hawley's Jukebox Volume Two follows-up a correspondingly styled comp issued in 2023. As before, 28 tracks are selected: indeed, the first collection was titled 28 Little Bangers From Richard Hawley's Jukebox. For a second time, Link Wray crops up. This time, well-known Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Another interesting thing about the endless flux of the streaming era is that, for all that it’s supposed to homogenise and flatten things out, sometimes it ends up allowing more interesting things to belatedly get their due. Look at the way once-obscure musicians like Julius Eastman, Alice Coltrane or Arthur Russell have snuck into the vocabulary of alternative and even mainstream music. But also, acts who weren’t short of success or acclaim but were nonetheless perhaps considered a bit cultish, nerdy or niche have gradually achieved a sort of cross-generational depth and universality of Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It’s no coincidence that synth heavy 1980s AOR is one of the first genres to generate significant online hits. Not just because its structures are formulaic – every genre is to one degree or another – but because its textures are so slick, even down to the multitracked vocals, that sounding synthetic is a feature not a bug. One has to wonder if this means that it is a threat to some of the biggest stars: after all, in the post-Taylor Swift world, that tidily arranged soft rock vibe is very much the chassis of so much. Indeed, when I first put this album on, flicking through opening tracks “ Read more ...