rock
Album: Amyl and the Sniffers - Cartoon DarknessWednesday, 23 October 2024
Amy Taylor’s lyrics on Amyl and the Sniffers’ previous discs could hardly be described as demure – especially with song titles like “Don’t Need a Cunt (Like You to Love Me)”. So, it’s encouraging to hear that the band hasn’t decided to censor... Read more... |
Public Service Broadcasting, Barrowland, Glasgow review - history given euphoric lifeSaturday, 19 October 2024
The years may go by and the albums might change, but there are always a few constants with Public Service Broadcasting. There is the recorded message that precedes their arrival for one, a disembodied voice booming out to inform the crowd to put... Read more... |
Album: Justin Adams & Mauro Durante - Sweet ReleaseSaturday, 12 October 2024
Sweet Release opens up a landscape of redemption by riding the rails of a classic blues, the title track talking of messages of peace and songs of sweet release, wrapping itself around a typically lean and potent riff conjured by guitarist... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Devil Rides In - Spellbinding Satanic Magick & The RockultSunday, 06 October 2024
Just over two weeks before Christmas 1967, The Rolling Stones issued Their Satanic Majesties Request. The album’s title appeared to serve time on the peace-and-love, flowers-for-everyone good vibes of the psychedelic era. A year later, the Stones’... Read more... |
Album: Van Morrison - New Arrangements and DuetsWednesday, 25 September 2024
It begins with a superb rendering of his 2018 song “Ain’t Gonna Moan No More”, on which Van is joined by the mellifluous voice of Kurt Elling, and which was recorded alongside the other duets on the album in 2018 and 2019.It then winds through a mix... Read more... |
Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve, Bristol Beacon review - so much more than a retread of the master's hitsMonday, 23 September 2024
Apart from being one of Britain’s greatest songsmiths of the past 50 years, Elvis Costello – from the early adoption of the rock’n’roll King’s first name – has produced a form of naked self-expression, blurred by intricately-tailored pretence.... Read more... |
Here comes the flood: Bob Dylan's 1974 Live RecordingsWednesday, 18 September 2024
Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half century old, the 27 CDs of 431 performances, 417 of them previously unreleased, of Dylan and The Band’s... Read more... |
Album: The Waeve - City LightsWednesday, 18 September 2024
Real-life couple Graham Coxon and Rose-Elinor Dougall are both musicians of some profile in their own rights. The former, especially, for his work with Blur. Their band The Waeve is a relatively recent development but they’ve thrown themselves at it... Read more... |
Album: Snow Patrol - The Forest is the PathThursday, 12 September 2024
Contrary to popular belief, not all music journalists get off on being snide about the same old easy-to-slate bands. When something like this album arrives in my review schedule, my instinct is to seek the good, to stick two fingers up to my... Read more... |
Album: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild GodWednesday, 28 August 2024
There’s a specific vocabulary that attends the arrival of a new Nick Cave album in the 21st century. Words like redemptive, cathartic, stark, unsparing are a crucial part of his music’s terroir. They’re as inescapable as the figure of death,... Read more... |
Album: Fontaines DC - RomanceSaturday, 24 August 2024
Whether it’s maturing or selling out, the tendency for rock bands to soften and smooth down their sound is understandable and, for fans, usually dispiriting – edge, purity, and strangeness evaporate as the dollars roll in. With their fourth album... Read more... |
Album: Osees - Sorcs 80Thursday, 15 August 2024
Aside from their musical output, the fame – or notoriety – of Californian rockers Osees derives from two main factors. First, their consistently changing the spelling of their name on different releases (eg, Thee Oh Sees, OCS, etc). Second, their... Read more... |
