New music
Barney Harsent
Not content with having released one of the best hip-hop albums in recent memory (Cheat Codes, alongside Black Thought), producer Brian Burton has rekindled his partnership with The Shins’ James Mercer for the first Broken Bells album in almost a decade.Into the Blue is described as “an ode to the pair’s shared musical influences”, a phrase that can, let’s be honest, raise eyebrows and alarm bells. However, far from being a lengthy synonym for painful pastiche, the pair manage to plunder the past with remarkable panache.One thing no one can accuse Into the Blue of is limited range, and that’s Read more ...
Jaminaround, Ancient Technology Centre, Cranborne review - contemporary sounds in an archaic setting
mark.kidel
The most unlikely venue: an extraordinary, authentic-as-can-be replica of a large Iron Age roundhouse. There’s a turf and grass roof, and the structure, made of immense roughly carved oak trunks, defies belief.You walk in, there is a kind of half-light, the feeling of entering a sacred space or a cathedral. The small circular performance area is set in the middle with gently raked seats rising all around. This is the centre piece of a brilliant and atmospheric evocation of an Iron Age settlement, the site of the Ancient Technology Centre in Cranborne, on the south east edge of Dorset.Although Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s fair to say that The Cult have taken on a number of identities since their mid-80s’ transformation from Goth also-rans the Death Cult to the chest-beating rockers we've come to know. They’ve been the Native American-influenced post punks of Dreamtime, the neo-hippies of Love, and the Rawk Gods of Sonic Temple, to name but a few.Under the Midnight Sun, their first album in six years, sees them still rocking, maybe just not as forcefully as in the past. In fact, there’s more than the odd dash of AOR present on both “Knife Through Butterfly Heart” and the title track, which also basks in Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Unless you’re one of the infamous 1%, you might be forgiven for recently spending a bit of time searching for a booster to reinvigorate your mojo before a seriously difficult winter kicks in. Well, assuming that your electricity supply hasn’t already been cut off by profiteering greed heads, the Bobby Lees’ new album might just do the trick.There’s nothing like raucous and fiery rock’n’roll to replenish your soul and the Bobby Lees have enough of that for it to be prescribed by the NHS. In fact, kicking off with its raucous title track indicates just how Bellevue is going to go and it’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two snapshots of Jamaica’s music, each catching styles associated with specific periods. The two CDs of Catch-A-Fire - Treasure Isle Ska (1963-1965) collects 47 tracks originally issued by Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid’s Duke Reid, Dutchess and Treasure Isle labels. Top Ranking DJ Session Volumes 1 & 2 is titled after two vintage compilations – the double CD compiles 44 tracks recorded by Joe Gibbs over 1977 to 1979.The umbrella under which these collections gather their tracks is not the names credited as the performer on each record, but the producer/entrepreneur who originally put these records Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Album opener “Atapos” was released as a single earlier in September, its sharply angular beats created by Björk and Indonesian duo Gabber Modus Operandi, one of whom has since had his contributions removed following #MeToo allegations. The song’s message is about growth towards connection. “To insist on absolute justice at all times / blocks connection” she sings, intoning “hope is a muscle” towards the end. A muscle we need to keep in good shape, despite the circumstances.Her 10th album over a 30 year solo career, the big songs here are dedicated to her late mother, Hildur Runa – the seven- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Make no mistake about it, Slipknot are massive. 23 years after their recording debut, they’ve had 8.5 billion streams, their sixth album, 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, hit the top of the charts in 12 countries, including the US and the UK, and their spectacular shows are a global phenomenon. In fact, it’s live that this writer really embraces Slipknot but their last album demonstrated they still had the chutzpah to knock a longplayer out of the park. The new one almost hits the same peaks. It certainly contains enough piledriving drama to keep their devoted fans, “the maggots”, happy. Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s a minor tragedy that Yeah Yeah Yeahs arrived just in time to be bundled in with a spurious “new rock revolution,” because they were so much more than rock. The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Libertines all may have had decent enough songs, but all were ultimately extremely trad rock, sonically living in mythical pasts.But YYYs were anything but that: they were explosively in-the-now, perfectly able to use classic rock and punk tropes as tools but never beholden to them. Indeed they even sounded less retro than their more electronic NYC hipster contemporaries LCD Soundsystem. Not Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Presumably before setting out on their current tour the Big Moon smashed a few mirrors, walked under some ladders and crossed the paths of numerous black cats. Not only is this jaunt over two years in the making, endlessly postponed for the usual coronavirus reasons, but the foursome also lost most of their equipment in Spain just prior to hitting the road.In addition this Glasgow show was also hindered by them damaging their lighting on the day of the show. It’s therefore little surprise that bassist and keyboardist Celia Archer introduces “Trouble”, a song originally penned about frontwoman Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Lambchop’s 1997 breakthrough album took its title from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Borrowing The Bible is a more purposefully brazen gambit, as Kurt Wagner tries to locate Americans’ spiritual hearts, in a shaken, besmirched and brutalised nation. It’s a record of reflection, reconciliation and quiet rebellion.Musically this is Americana in the loosest sense. Alt.country’s splicing of punk attitude with Nashville roots, which Lambchop embodied back when they were a real, unwieldy band and not simply a brand name for Wagner’s opaquely humane poetic thoughts, ceased to satisfy him several Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The British music weeklies were clear about where the Sound-On-Sound LP and its singles fitted into the current musical topography when they were issued in 1979. Comparisons offered up included Magazine, Talking Heads and XTC. And, more curiously, The Tubes. Whatever the assessments, the band behind these releases was new wave.There was a snag. The records were credited to Bill Nelson’s Red Noise. And Nelson had fronted Be-Bop Deluxe, whose first album came out in 1974. Their last, Drastic Plastic, had hit shops in early 1978. The music may have been new wave, but he was not. Really though, Read more ...
peter.quinn
Lauded by Elton John (who called their 2020 debut EP Love and Hate in a Different Time “probably one of the most seminal records I've heard in the last 10 years”), a show-stealing performance on Later… With Jools Holland in 2021, fêted at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. The inexorable rise of LA-based trio Gabriels – Jacob Lusk, Ryan Hope and Ari Balouzian – continues with the release of this mesmerising, superbly crafted debut album.Produced by Grammy-winning Sounwave (Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé), Angels & Queens, Part I (Part II will follow in March next year) is a collection of seven Read more ...