New music
Liz Thomson
Hot on the heels of his Olivier Award-winning musical Standing at the Sky's Edge, comes In This City They Call You Love, the 10th solo album from Richard Hawley, proud son of Sheffield, and it’s a peach. With echoes of early Elvis (the slow numbers, like “Can’t Help Falling in Love”) and Roy Orbison, it feels almost instantly familiar. You sink into it as if into the arms of an old friend, or a comfy sofa – at least once you’re past the faintly menacing opening track, “Two for His Heels”.For me at least, the songs that really grab you are the slow, moody ballads, among which “Hear Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When the Lovely Eggs’ married duo of Holly Ross and David Blackwell took to the stage at the recently rebranded XOYO in Birmingham on Bank Holiday Monday, they looked like they should be playing for two completely separate bands. She was looking glam, dressed like a guitar wielding Rόisín Murphy, with a blonde bob and orange and black tiger print dress, while he slid behind his drum kit in a washed-out tour t-shirt and a Johnny Ramone haircut.Once they burst into the speedy, buzz saw guitar powered “Death Grip Kids”, however, any ideas of a musical mismatch were immediately dispelled. The Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Natasha Khan’s musical career has always explored the artier end of pop. Her latest album, her sixth and first in five years, is more akin to the soundtrack work she did with Swiss composer Dominik Scherrer on BBC spook-thriller Requiem in 2018 than her Bat For Lashes albums.There are not many actual songs. Instead, lots of “pieces”, most of them between two and three minutes long. Ethereal in tone, enjoyment depends on an ability to roll with gossamer fairy waftings. Instead, this writer grew bored.The album is titled in honour of Khan’s daughter and she terms these sonic snapshots “song Read more ...
India Lewis
Last night’s Travels Over Feeling: The Music of Arthur Russell (a concert in part accompanying the recent publication of a book about his life by Richard King) was a brilliant way to honour the legacy of a fascinating, challenging, and sublime musician who, largely unrecognised in his lifetime, is now loved by many. The tribute was truly moving (reader, I cried twice), but a tonal shift towards the end, whilst enjoyed by many, was a little jarring.Starting the night, Russell’s former partner, Tom Lee, was brought onstage. Lee brought Russell’s music to a wider audience after his death from Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Any Richard Thompson appearance comes with a hallmark guaranteeing quality produce – be that an album or a stage show. Indeed, Thompson's 75th birthday concert will land on 8 June at the Royal Albert Hall, with a dazzling range of musical guests to rival the same venue’s epic 70th birthday bash five years ago. Meanwhile, it’s been six years since his last album, 13 Rivers, an album he described on its release as “coming to me as a surprise in a dark time”.Dark times, you say? All rivers meet their end when they meet the sea, and Ship to Shore, featuring the same line-up of players in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Jon Savage's The Secret Public How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture 1955-1979 accompanies the titular author/historian/journalist’s book of almost the same name. The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) and this 41-track double CD each track exactly what their titles say, drilling into what has often paralleled or underlain yet repeatedly influenced a constantly evolving mainstream.Little Richard is seen on the cover of the book and the compilation. Other figures crop up twice on the CD set: British producer and songwriter Joe Meek (with Joe Meek Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Brooklyn-based composer and bandleader Jihye Lee’s story really does take quite some telling. Having been an indie pop singer in her native Korea, she enrolled in 2011 as a Vocal Studies student at Berklee in Boston, also hoping to develop her composing skills. And then came the "coup de foudre". The sound of a large jazz ensemble completely transfixed her: “I looked through the window and saw a bunch of people just blowing their horns, and it was just so energetic and so enthusiastic and so lush…that was the moment when I knew large ensemble is for me.”And she has never looked back. She won Read more ...
Tom Carr
If there is one positive of the past decade, it must be the growing openness with mental health and wellbeing. Whether in the films we watch or music we listen to, there is much less of a stigma in addressing anxiety, depression, and mental health issues in general.For most of their career, pop-rock duo Twenty One Pilots, have focussed on these themes through frontman-vocalist Tyler Joseph’s rapped/sung/sometimes screamed lyrics over Josh Dun’s powerful drumming. Since 2015’s Blurryface, they have woven these into a conceptual arc that has run through their preceding albums (2018’s Trench and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Isobel Campbell has maintained a consistent career on the fringes of popular music for three decades. She's made a home in the area where indie, folk, rock and BBC 6Music merge. Aside from her 1990s involvement with Belle and Sebastian, she’s best-known for her trio of albums with the late Mark Lanegan, her gracefulness and crafted precision working well against his gruff world weariness. Following that, she was scuppered for a while by legal label entanglements, but since 2020 has been up and at ‘em again, following her own path. The best word for her latest album is “shimmering”; 13 head- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The final track of Samana’s third album is titled “The Preselis,” after the west Welsh mountain range – the place antiquarians suggested as the source of Stonehenge’s blue stones. The song’s opening lyrics are “The blue stones, they grow over me, Carved into mountains, the blood of need.” Later, the words “anima” and “animus” are repeated before the song ends with the recurring refrain “Lay the body down.”Dovetailing a tenet of Jungian psychology – anima, the female unconscious of a male, and animus, the male unconscious of a female – with notions of an evocative landscape firmly places Read more ...
caspar.gomez
If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.Every Great Escape’s closing Saturday it’s taken over by Sounds Australia, offering a fresh selection of what that country has to offer. And there’s a bar, of course, where, at midday, photographer Finetime and I avail ourselves of a traditional media breakfast of BrewDog Wingman pale ale (4.3%).The first music of the day is a short set by Tamara Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can sometimes also be found for £700, a relative bargain in the context of the upper limit of the prices the collector’s market has settled on.There were two follow-up albums – each credited to Andwella. August 1970’s World's End fetches around £40 to £80; People's People, issued in late 1970, attracts prices of £50 to £100. Cult stuff then, with interest centred on that first album. And where there’s such appeal, repressings follow. Love And Poetry was first reissued in 1995 Read more ...