fri 06/12/2024

singer-songwriters

Album: Kim Deal - Nobody Loves You More

The progress of Kim Deal has been one of the great delights of modern music. Much as one wishes Pixies well, they have never been the same without her distinctive voice and presence, whereas her other band The Breeders have only gone from strength...

Read more...

Hannah Scott, Worthing Pavilion Theatre Atrium review - filling an arctic venue with human warmth

London-based singer-songwriter Hannah Scott has warned her next song may reduce us to tears. It is, she says, inspired by events following the death of beloved father. The undertaker advised her, and her sister, that it wasn’t really done for women...

Read more...

ARK: United States V by Laurie Anderson, Aviva Studios, Manchester review - a vessel for the thoughts and imaginings of a lifetime

Picture this: framing the stage are two pearlescent clouds which, throughout the performance, gently pulsate with flickering light. Behind them on a giant screen is a spinning globe, its seas twinkling like a million stars.Suddenly, this magical...

Read more...

Tucker Zimmerman, The Lexington, London review - undersung old-timer airs songwriting excellence

Tucker Zimmerman is singing a number called “Don’t Go Crazy (Go in Peace)”. At 83, he performs sitting down. Surrounded by support band Iji, who act as his pick-up, he approaches the song in a whispery, affable voice. At the start of his set he was...

Read more...

Album: Chuck Prophet - Wake the Dead

Chuck Prophet speaks the old language of rock’n’roll as if it’s bright and new. His long gone band Green On Red were R.E.M.’s Eighties peers, and as rock’s cultural tide has receded, his loyalty to its spirit of liberty, askance at authority and...

Read more...

Album: Halsey - The Great Impersonator

For many performers, flirting with death is a pose or a distant metaphor, or simply don’t-give-a-damn insouciance. This is not the case with Halsey on her fifth album. She’s been assaulted, in recent years, by a range of serious illnesses and...

Read more...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 86: Molly Tuttle, Depeche Mode, Pharoah Sanders, Seefeel, Hinds, Sofi Tukker and more

VINYL OF THE MONTHHannah Scott Absence of Doubt (Fancourt Music)Sometimes a singer comes along who’s not stylistically my thing at all, but their voice has a quality that wrenches, reaches inside, beyond usual taste judgements. For me, a good...

Read more...

Album: Susanna - Meditations on Love

For a record whose subject matter involves unfaithfulness, ageing, loneliness, fear of death, darkness, sorrow, battles, haunting, sleeplessness and struggling to breathe, this is a lot of fun. But then Susanna Wallumrød has always leavened...

Read more...

Album: Beabadoobee - This is How Tomorrow Moves

Beatrice “beabadoobee” Laus provides strong backup for the common argument that, particularly in the mainstream, genre is no longer particularly important. From the outset, she has consistently dissolved the mainstream/indie binary, and pulled from...

Read more...

Album: Meshell Ndegeocello - No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin

Meshell Ndegeocello's groundbreaking new album No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin takes you on a musical journey which defies categorisation.Eight years in the making and set for release on 2 August – Baldwin's centennial – the album’s...

Read more...

Album: AJ Lee & Blue Summit - City of Glass

In the world of popular music, tangential connections to success are profile-raising. They offer an immediate connection to an artist. It is beholden on me, then, despite not knowing it when I first enjoyed this album, to mention that rising Grammy...

Read more...

Album: Madeleine Peyroux - Let's Walk

Madeleine Peyroux made her name with her second album, 2004’s Careless Love. It consists almost completely of cover versions, delivered in a quiet, jazz-bluesey shuffle redolent of singers from the 1930s. She’s never flown as high again but has...

Read more...
Subscribe to singer-songwriters