pop music
Thomas H. Green
Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis hasn’t made large waves this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps this is because her appeal has partly been rooted in Latin communities across the US and, indeed, Central and South America. Last year her third album, Red Moon in Venus, reached the Top 5 of the US album charts. At the time she said she already had her next album ready, a Spanish language affair. This is it and it’s a slightly feistier creature than its woozily narcotic predecessor.Uchis’s current default setting remains sexy-stoned. Her voice is a seductive instrument. She silkily rolls language Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
Sofia Coppola knows a thing or two about teenage girldom. Like many of her other characters – in The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Somewhere and Marie Antoinette – the subject of her latest film, Priscilla Presley, is an ingenue living in a gilded cage and surrounded by lavish boredom. It hardly matters whether the setting is actually the Park Hyatt Tokyo, Chateau Marmont, the Palace of Versailles – or Graceland, in this case.The song remains the same. Written and directed by Coppola, Priscilla is a tortuous journey into the dark heart of celebrity. Yet the well-known story follows an Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the Light of Time - UK Post-Rock and Leftfield Pop 1992-1998 was unexpected. Collecting 17 tracks, it brought a fresh perspective on a particular aspect of the UK’s independent-minded music. This ground-breaking, agenda-setting release was effectively the soundtrack to what has been written about post-rock.The groundswell dug into by In the Light of Time ran in parallel with shoegazing but what was heard – while as much about texture as shoegazing – came from a different perspective as it embraced elements of Krautrock and techno. This was music which impacted on Radiohead and sigur rós. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Typically tagged as the originators of pub rock, Brinsley Schwarz were where Nick Lowe honed his muse. But there were twists, turns and a waywardness which makes approaching them as a linear proposition difficult. Sometimes, they pointed one way yet then headed in a different direction. Next, off elsewhere. The complete-catalogue, seven CD set Thinking Back - The Anthology 1970-1975 encapsulates all of this.They had evolved from Kippington Lodge, a straightforward pop group which had released five singles on Parlophone over 1967 to 1969. Chafing at their unadventurous persona, they rejigged Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Some years there’s no obvious Album of the Year. 2023 is not such a year. Any one of five albums could have been my choice. I chose Kesha from that esteemed selection because her fifth album bombed commercially, and I want to BIG IT RIGHT UP.The album I’ve listened to most all year is Iggy Pop’s Every Loser. Partly this is because it came out in January, so I really did listen to it all year. But mostly it’s because, after years of often interesting albums which I cherry-picked, the great proto-punk survivor came up with a whole set that worked, a straightforward rock album, with hooks that Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the annual seasonal one-off, in which theartsdesk on Vinyl dives into festive releases, as well as the boxsets and reissues that will make fine presents. Grab a glass of something and dive in!CHRISTMAS VINYL OF THE MONTHVarious Stax Christmas (Craft)Who’s going to argue with a new collection featuring Stax artists tackling festive fare, mostly dating from the late 1960s and early Seventies? That it features a previously unreleased and impassioned version of “Blue Christmas” by Carla Thomas, as well as an alternate take of Otis Redding’s “Merry Christmas Baby” only adds to the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Madness are very and volubly pleased that their latest album, their 13th, recently hit the UK No. 1 spot. Unbelievably, it’s their first studio album to do this. It even knocked Taylor Swift off the top spot. “I’m not saying, ‘Taylor Swift, fuck off! Drake, do one!'” says Suggs, early in their set, in his usual dryly genial manner, “but you gotta scratch your own back every now and then.”It will not be the last reference to their chart-topping status. And the album in question, the awkwardly titled but vital Theatre of the Absurd presents C’est la Vie, is the basis for much of tonight, with Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The first of two December theartsdesk on Vinyls which will appear in quick succession. This one's mostly new artists. The next one will be our Christmas Special, filled with seasonal fare and present-suitable reissues and boxsets. For the best musical finds, dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHViken Arman Alone Together (Denature)Minimalism is easy to do but very, very hard to do well. French producer Viken Arman starts his debut album by thrilling in this area. The word which springs to mind listening to that opener, “You With Me”, is “techno” but, while that’s in there, Arman also sprinkles an almost Read more ...
Gary Naylor
It’s 2012 and the London Olympics might as well be happening on the Moon for Jen and Stacey. In fact, you could say the same for everyone else scrabbling a living in Bradford – or anywhere north of Watford – and we know what those left-behind places did when presented with a ballot box in 2016 and 2019.Not that such weighty matters concern our two girls, out for a banging (in more senses than one) £1 Thursday night out, living for the sex and booze and rock’n’roll that get them from one week to the next. (Writer, Kat Rose-Martin, wisely keeps other temptations out of arm’s reach, one of many Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A deathless trend in pop is taking great songs, slowing them down, doing orchestral versions, or rendering them raw acoustic. This, ostensibly, reveals their genius and/or brings them a new audience. Rarely, it can work, as on Johnny Cash’s final albums, but usually it simply renders sonic perfection as bland, naff slop. Such is the case with Trevor Horn’s latest.Horn is a great and visionary pop producer. He’s also performed in bands, notably his breakthrough group Buggles and prog behemoths Yes. In 2019 he released Reimagines the Eighties, which featured star singers on hits of the relevant Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Both of us have always enjoyed listening to dance music, and we wanted to interpret disco in our own way. We wanted to make good quality soulful electronic dance music, more biting than the usual bland disco stuff. We wanted to make records that would stand out in a disco and that you could listen to in your own bedroom."Speaking to NME’s Paul Morley in May 1981, Soft Cell’s Marc Almond clearly expressed where he and Dave Ball intended to go with their music. At this point, the duo had not issued much. October 1980’s barely available Mutant Moments EP was followed by one track on the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Listening to the best of what they’ve created since their post-2005 reformation, it would take a staunch anti-Take That churl to hold fast to the punk-rockin’ claim the “man band” are, musically, just talentless piffle. “Shine”, “Patience”, “Hey Boy”, “The Flood” and others are evidence to the contrary.But it’s understandable why the (now) trio are so divisive. For those old enough, they’re manufactured tween-fangirl pap (from the era that gave us rave, grunge and Britpop rising). To those younger, they’re softy nan music. Their latest album contains a few memorable tunes but slips, Read more ...