pop
All Points East, Victoria Park review - Björk blooms at new Hackney festivalTuesday, 29 May 2018
For the past decade, Victoria Park in east London has been host to the Field Day and Lovebox festivals, both homegrown and both still growing in size and influence. Last year’s headliners included rare appearances from Aphex Twin (Field Day) and... Read more... |
Unknown Mortal Orchestra/Deerhunter, Albert Hall, Manchester review – New Zealanders and friends create festival vibeMonday, 28 May 2018
Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s four albums all centre around off-kilter pop and flirtations with distortion; their latest LP, Sex & Food, carries this tradition forwards in a more laid-back manner. Their current European tour in support of the album... Read more... |
CD: Snow Patrol - WildnessThursday, 24 May 2018
Few bands divide opinion quite like Snow Patrol. Their fans see their slow, intense anthems as cathartic friends. Others - myself included - tend to regard their music as an insidious, dreary presence. As Nicky Wire (of the Manics) once put it, "the... Read more... |
CD: Chvrches - Love Is DeadWednesday, 23 May 2018
When bands move to the US, some find themselves drawn into the commercial machine; when Scottish band Chvrches crossed the Atlantic, they were targeting direct assimilation from the start. Recorded with mega-producer Greg Kurstin, the band are... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: SpiritSunday, 25 March 2018
The press ad for Spirit’s debut album wasn’t shy. “Five came together for a purpose: to blow the sum of man’s musical experience apart and bring it together in more universal forms. They became a single musical being: Spirit. It happens in the first... Read more... |
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, Roundhouse - hits and missesThursday, 08 March 2018
There are good musical reasons why it might never have occurred to you to wonder how Lady Gaga would sound if adapted by Duke Ellington; Radiohead by Sidney Bechet; or Bruce Springsteen by Frank Sinatra. Even if you still think those reasons are... Read more... |
CD: Erasure - World BeyondThursday, 08 March 2018
That Erasure have stuck to the tonalities of electropop – and not just electropop, but the extra gay hi-NRG flavour thereof, with Andy Bell's theatrical voice cartwheeling off Vince Clarke's fizzing beats – for seventeeen albums now makes them a... Read more... |
CD: Gwenno - Le KovThursday, 01 March 2018
There was a hint of what was to come in Gwenno Saunders’ debut, Y Dydd Olaf. It was, for the most part, a Welsh-language affair, save for the closing track “Amser”, a song sung in Cornish and the album’s dizzying slow dazzle. For her follow-up, Le... Read more... |
CD: Fever Ray - PlungeSaturday, 17 February 2018
This album has been about in virtual form since last autumn but now receives physical release. In more ways than one. Since theartsdesk didn’t review it back then, its reappearance on CD and vinyl gives us an excuse to now. After all, Swedish... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Chris HillmanSunday, 04 February 2018
In 1976, when his first solo album Slippin’ Away was released, Chris Hillman could look back on being a founder member of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, two of America’s most important bands. He had also played alongside former members... Read more... |
Nick Coleman: Voices - How a Great Singer Can Change Your Life, review - earworms exploredSunday, 14 January 2018
Readers familiar with Nick Coleman’s 2012 memoir The Train in the Night will know before embarking on this book that the author suffered the worst possible fate for a music journalist: deafness, a problem (Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss) which... Read more... |
CD: The Go! Team - SemicircleSunday, 07 January 2018
The Go! Team have been unrivalled in the world of euphoric hip-pop after their samplerific debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, blasted its way onto the 2005 Mercury Prize shortlist. Since then, founding member Ian Parton has utilised everything from... Read more... |
