singer-songwriters
Album of the Year: Roddy Frame - Seven DialsThursday, 25 December 2014![]() Far too many years ago, Roddy Frame – masquerading as Aztec Camera – took his first bow with an album of wonderfully vital pop songs. High Land, Hard Rain was jaunty with youth but somehow freighted with musical wisdom, the fruit of ingesting a... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The CzarsSunday, 14 December 2014![]() The Czars: Best ofQueen of Denmark, John Grant’s first solo album, seemed to arrive from nowhere in 2010. Here was a singer-songwriter with a unique voice evoking disparate wellsprings Eric Carmen, Randy Newman and Lionel Richie. When taken with a... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: 2014 RevisitedSunday, 07 December 2014![]() With just over two weeks to Christmas, thoughts might be turning to which of the deluge of 2014’s reissues might be suitable as a gift, worth putting on your own wish-list for Santa or even merit buying for yourself. So if help is needed,... Read more... |
10 Questions for Songwriter Jackson BrowneMonday, 17 November 2014![]() If there's one commonly-known fact about Jackson Browne, it's that (with a bit of help from Glenn Frey) he wrote "Take It Easy" for the Eagles. The first track off their first album, and their first hit single, it remained a trademark for the band... Read more... |
CD: Damien Rice – My Favourite Faded FantasySunday, 02 November 2014![]() Damien Rice released his last album in 2006, but it doesn’t take long, listening to the lyrics of his latest, to work out what he’s been doing in the meantime: feeling very, very sorry for himself. Rice’s relationship, professional and personal,... Read more... |
CD: Taylor Swift - 1989Tuesday, 28 October 2014![]() There's a "foreword" which accompanies the new Taylor Swift album – because it's not enough for the one-time Nashville starlet gone full New York pop star merely to create physical objects for the digital age: she also has to give them forewords... Read more... |
Nick Mulvey, Komedia, BrightonWednesday, 22 October 2014![]() The humming is rising. Only three songs in and already a large section of the crowd is swaying, tranced out, from side to side, like southern Baptists, swept along by an extended version of “Meet Me There” from Nick Mulvey’s 2014 Mercury Music Prize... Read more... |
10 Questions for Musician Jamie CullumWednesday, 08 October 2014![]() Since self-releasing his debut album Heard It All Before in 1999, Jamie Cullum has gone on to become the UK's biggest selling jazz artist of all time. Since April 2010, he has also presented a weekly jazz show on BBC Radio 2, for which he won a Sony... Read more... |
CD: Jackson Browne - Standing in the BreachSunday, 05 October 2014![]() Jackson Browne's output has slowed since the mid-Nineties, and this arrives six years after Time the Conqueror. The latter was much preoccupied with the Bush administration and the Iraq war, and Standing in the Breach – with a sleeve depicting a war... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Singer-songwriter Vashti BunyanSaturday, 27 September 2014![]() The story of Vashti Bunyan is a compelling one. The urbane Sixties would-be popstrel who gave it all up to ride up to a hippie community in a horse-drawn caravan, writing an exquisite album on the way, Just Another Diamond Day, which then became a... Read more... |
Angel Olsen, Electric BallroomFriday, 26 September 2014![]() “You don’t always get what you want in life,” said Angel Olsen to a group of fans haranguing her at the front last night at the Electric Ballroom. She rarely uttered a word between songs but this was a defiant end to the evening. Though her powerful... Read more... |
CD: Leonard Cohen - Popular ProblemsSunday, 21 September 2014![]() Leonard Cohen has always been, first and foremost, a poet. His thoroughly grounded mix of Vedanta, Zen and Jewish mysticism places him in a class apart. He is both rabbinical high priest and consummate entertainer. As he’s never traded on borrowed... Read more... |
