pop music
david.cheal
One of the great pleasures of watching live music lies in witnessing the joy that people get from making it; to experience a great live band in their prime, to see them interacting with each other, feeding off each other, pushing each other on, is a marvellous thing. Arcade Fire are like that: this show, the second of two nights in London from the Montreal band, was an infectious outpouring of feverish emotion and raw energy. I really don’t think any of them are virtuoso musicians, but there was a cohesiveness, a sense of collective endeavour from the eight-strong ensemble, that made them Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It's been a while since the pop/punk and post/pre-Richey comparisons have been made. Ironic considering how seemlessly the Manics slip between modes these days. Today theartsdesk brings you an exclusive preview of the live, power-popping video of "Hazleton Avenue", due for release next Monday to coincide with their live digital EP, Some Kind of Nothingness (available on iTunes).Having had to postpone the Birmingham and London gigs in October due to James's laryngitis, tracks have been taken from elsewhere during the band's hugely successful tour, which recently took in Australia and the Far Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Two lots of abiding electropop royalty, classicist Slovenian techno, an indie band who play electronica, a hyper-synthetic R&B superstar, Irish-Mancunian disco-boogie, "buzzsaw fuzz" meets Phil Spector, Paris-Bordeaux-Alabama-Berlin rock chaos, Welsh psychdelic dreams, a post-dubstep crooner and a novelty song about Gillian McKeith - (almost) all human life is here in Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs's round-up of tracks of interest out to buy now.Pet Shop Boys Together (EMI) About 200 years into their career, the Pet Shop Boys have barely changed - still plaintive, still rolling out Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's a kitchen-sink feel to this children's play by David Almond – indeed, nine-tenths of it takes place in a Newcastle kitchen – which adds a certain edge to it. Even though the broad, cartoonish comedy is signalled from the off, there's an initial hint of real-life grimness in the scenario of a little girl trying to care for her unkempt father who won't eat properly, emits abrupt shrieks and is convinced he is a bird. There's an engagement with loss that runs through the play too, a bittersweetness that makes it completely unsurprising that the Pet Shop Boys, those masters of putting a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Heaven 17 are an underrated group. Sidelined by electro-pop festishists and too egg-headedly wordy to be embraced by Eighties kitsch afficionados, they're easily best known for their 1983 hit "Temptation". Last night they played this late in their set - of course - but before the encore. Not the recognisable single, mind, but a percussive work-out redolent of pumping Italo-house.It remains a cracking song, whichever version they chose to play, an epic gospel-tinged duet between singer Glenn Gregory and backing vocalist Billie Godfrey, the latter's thin frame belying potent lung-power. However Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Luxembourg's musical landscape has few claims to represent the Grand Duchy itself. Most of Luxembourg's Eurovision entries weren't actually from the Duchy, as there was little local music to draw on. So Belgium's cod punk-gone-blando Plastic Bertrand became 1987's entry (with “Amour, Amour”). In 1965 Luxembourg won Eurovision with France's France Gall's “Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son”, a song written by her countryman Serge Gainsbourg. Radio Luxembourg began broadcasting to the outside world in the 1930s and went on to define the Swinging Sixties until the BBC woke up to what was going on. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
There’s a moment during Hjaltalín’s encore when bolero rhythms take over and you wonder if the Reykjavik septet have invented a new musical hybrid: a Ravel-driven makeover of Seventies-slanted soul. As singer Sigrídur Thorlacius lets rip on the thrillingly anthemic “Feels Like Sugar”, it’s clear that Hjaltalín aren’t bothered with current musical templates. They take from the unlikeliest sources, smoosh them together and end up sounding like no one else. After all, this is a band with a stand-up bassoon player. At home, they topped the charts covering a song by Icelandic disco star and Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Unlikely cool. It’s what unites LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip. They’re the geeks and outsiders who made it to being hip on the dancefloor. These improbable, subversive electro-pop heroes have united this autumn for what for fans has been a dream double-headline tour. Both bands have had albums out this year and both albums have been well received. But for James Murphy the rumours are that this may be the last tour he does as LCD Soundsystem. And last night he sure was playing as if saying a long goodbye to the ones he’d loved.A joy of both bands is that although they essentially work out of an Read more ...
hilary.whitney
Mick Rock (b 1948) captured some of rock's most provocative and memorable images: David Bowie at the height of his Ziggy Stardust androgyny; Debbie Harry looking every inch the Marilyn Monroe of punk; Lou Reed sweating beneath his Kabuki make-up - indeed, The Faces of Rock'n'Roll, as a new book surveying four decades of his photographs is titled.Rock’s skill as a photographer and his extraordinary sense of timing - in more ways than one - is indisputable but what makes his pictures particularly striking is that Rock was no mere observer: he wasn’t just part of the scene, he helped to launch Read more ...
howard.male
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an amphetamine-fuelled chicken on rollers? No, it’s the one-time guitarist for Dr Feelgood (during the only period that matters) still doing the moves that made him the main reason to see the band in the mid-1970s. Now bald-headed and bushy-browed but still delivering those electrically charged stares (which he learnt to do during a brief stint as a schoolteacher), he had the air of a benevolent dictator last night as he surveyed the Academy’s crowd for would-be assassins to mock-machine-gun with his trusty Stratocaster.To an audience made up of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bounding on stage in a purple version of the man dress pioneered by Mick Jagger at The Stones’s 1969 Hyde Park concert, Ariel Pink looks like a mistranslated version of what a late-Sixties rock star should be. His long hair is dyed blonde. The roots show. His make-up is already smudged, as if applied with mittens. It’s a wonky look, in keeping with his music; a music that sounds like a badly tuned radio playing the hits of the early Eighties, the smooth soul of the Seventies and Sixties bubblegum garage pop all at once. Los Angeles’s most peculiar art rocker doesn’t seem to be playing it Read more ...
david.cheal
At 7.55pm I was tired and grouchy. By 9.30pm I was a happy man, thanks to Neil Diamond. Say what you like about this 69-year-old singer and songwriter: he may be a cheesy old showbiz pro, but personally I am partial to a bit of cheesy showbiz, and an hour and a half in his company on the final night of this year’s Radio 2 Electric Proms was a real tonic.With his Thunderbirds eyebrows and his prowling gait, Diamond was an imposing figure whose voice has lost none of its gritty rasp, a quality that lends his songs emotional authenticity. And his rapport with the audience was immaculate – lots Read more ...