pop music
Kieron Tyler
First on were The Supremes with “Baby Love.” Next, The Miracles performed “You Really Got a Hold on me.” After this, Stevie Wonder’s “I Call it Pretty Music But the Old People Call it the Blues,” The Temptations’ “The Way You do the Things You do” and Martha & The Vandellas’ “Heatwave.”The opening section of the Ready Steady Go! episode broadcast on 28 April 1965 was hot – really hot. The show was titled The Sound of Motown and its guest host was Dusty Springfield. She sang a song solo, and one with Martha Reeves.Those involved with the show knew Springfield was a high-profile ambassador Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Careful consideration is needed when leaving your seat at a Divine Comedy gig. “He’s off for a drink,” observed Neil Hannon of the audience member ambling away during a rendition of “Gin Soaked Boy”, before adding, accurately, “this song’s excellent.” Indeed it was, and a fitting closer to the first half of this leisurely, career-spanning set dedicated, mostly, to the hits.That theme is somewhat ironic given Hannon never seemed particularly comfortable as a pop star, particularly during the height of Britpop, but here, suited and wearing shades, he seemed at ease. There was a relaxed vibe Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Radiate Like This is the first album in six years from American indie rock outfit Warpaint. The wait is, in part at least, down to Covid, which took hold just after they’d finished early recording sessions, forcing the band – like the rest of the world – into a solitary stasis of sorts.This resulted in time to tinker – space to iron out the creases and finesse the folds as band members Emily Kokal, Jenny Lee Lindberg, Stella Mozgawa and Theresa Wayman recorded their parts in isolation, building the songs slowly, carefully, layer by layer.The result is really quite beautiful. Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
You could never accuse the Vaccines of being the most subtle of bands. When the London quintet ran through the intro to “Surfing in the Sky”, their frontman Justin Young started to shoogle around onstage as if, yes, he was riding a surfboard, in case the song’s title and Ventures-cum-Beach Boys opening hadn’t made the inspiration clear enough.In a way, it was a brief snapshot of the band, influences worn on their sleeve and with a cheerful grin on their face. This has both positives and negatives, but it is undeniably successful. The Glasgow venue, which Young later hailed as being one of his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Spring is in the air and vinyl is, as always, on the turntable here at theartsdesk on Vinyl. We’ve been ploughing through all the latest releases and reissues, played loud on a large sound system, each evaluated as fully as possible. Below you’ll find 7000 words to pick through and locate what sounds good to you. Unrestricted by genre, all musical life is here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHJames Domestic Carrion Repeating (Amok/TNS)Suffolk-based James Scott is in more bands than there’s space to list here, most notably punk outfit The Domestics. His solo debut is a complete treat that deserves Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Much has changed for Foals since their current run of shows were first announced. Initially scheduled to support 2019’s twin releases of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Parts 1 and 2, so much time has passed that the group are now set to release their next album instead, while in the meantime they’ve seen keyboardist Edwin Congreave depart and, on a rather less dramatic note, released their own brand of hot sauce.Therefore a sense of relief seemed to run through this night, the second of a two night residency in Edinburgh, a feeling that came across from both enthusiastic band and gleeful Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Returning with their first new music in almost a decade, EDM supergroup Swedish House Mafia (the producer-DJ trio Steve Angello, Axwell and Sebastian Ingros) deliver their debut album with a sense of vaulting ambition and anything-is-possible belief. In their own words, Paradise Again is a “sonic adventure” to a “new world, a world of free thoughts, limitless ideas and space for progression.”There are, if we’re being generous, two ideas on Paradise Again. The first is one that anyone familiar with their oeuvre will already be well acquainted with: big, showy, glitter-gun production that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fat Man’s Music Festival. The Haystack. Red Line Explosion. Stormy Petrel. Butterwick. Sweet Chariot. Names which don't immediately spring to mind.The factor linking them is also common to 1967’s “Let’s go to San Francisco” hit-makers The Flower Pot Men, The First Class, who charted in 1974 with “Beach Baby,” and The Ivy League, who went Top Ten in early 1965 with “Funny How Love Can be.”Then, there are well-known songs like “Hip Hip Hooray,” “Knock Knock Who’s There,” “My Sentimental Friend” and “Winchester Cathedral” which, respectively, were hits for The Troggs, Mary Hopkin, Herman’s Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The global popularity of Latin music in the past few years is almost incomprehensibly huge. 2017’s “Despacito” by Puerto Rican Luis Fonsi was the point where it became clear that Latin America – like South Korea – was now operating entirely on its own pop terms and making the rest of the world dance to its beat. And a look at global streaming charts will show consistently vast figures for artists like Brazil’s Anitta whose “Envolver” is currently the worldwide no.1 single with streams in the hundreds of millions. All of which has altered the shape of the Anglophone pop mainstream Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“You know you’ll always be my best friend” and “There’s no-one else who gets me quite like you” run a couple of the lyrics to “Happy New Year”, the opening song from Norwich duo Let’s Eat Grandma’s third album. And the whole is laced with love songs from band members Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth to each other, not romantic love, but songs passionately, poetically affirming their long friendship.Two Ribbons is a celebratory synth-pop explosion but also laced with bittersweetness. It has a key back-story. Let’s Eat Grandma appeared six years ago, aged only 16, Norfolk schoolgirls firing Read more ...
Jasper Rees
What a remarkable band 10cc were. For most of the 1970s they made highly unusual pop that careered without a care between bubblegum and prog. Their ease migrating across style lines from Pythonesque japes to dense seriosity lay in the personnel: four bandleaders who all brought a sensibility to a democratic collective. The wackier half of the band departed in 1976, not long after their most soaring hit, written by the more mainstream half. Godley and Creme, seemingly, were not in love with Stewart and Gouldman, whose next big hit was “The Things We Do For Love”.Their first hit – a falsetto Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Despite a five-year career and no breakout hits, Australian outfit Confidence Man has grabbed the attention of some heavyweights.Signed to Heavenly Records, a label which knows their Roscoff onions from the common-or-garden variety, their 2017 single “Bubblegum” was remixed to bouncing brilliance by the late, great Andrew Weatherall, and there they are, squeezed between Clairo and Courtney Barnett on Glastonbury 2022’s banner poster. Their second album fulfils such faith. It’s a primary-coloured, sexy, cheeky dancefloor explosion.It's pop, but with a 1990s feel, as in doused in beat-bustin’ Read more ...