New music
andy.morgan
The carriage swayed violently, sending a bottle of Perroni sliding across the Formica table top and into the quick hand of Malian guitarist Afel Bocoum. As we sped along, the sun sent flecks of light up the walls, across the ceiling, along the luggage racks and back down over assorted musicians who were sleeping, lounging, talking or playing music together in small groups. A green noise of trees and hedges blurred past our window, whilst barebacked hills seemed to stand completely still in the blue distance. The Africa Express was cruising through Dumfries and Galloway on its way to down to Read more ...
howard.male
Marc Bolan’s voice was as inseparable from his songs as the sheen and shimmer of one of his Biba satin jackets was inseparable from the jacket itself. That unique faux-posh phrasing, singing whimsical, surreal lyrics, became texturally essential to every T Rex song. Because his voice was such an integral aspect of his music, I had mixed feelings about last night’s tribute concert in aid of the PRS for Music Members Benevolent Fund. Would the diverse mix of artists try to mimic the Bolan warble, or take the wiser course of putting their own spin on his material?On the whole things went Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Shields leaves standing everything Grizzly Bear have done previously. Four albums in, the Brooklyn quartet move forward with their most focused, most cohesive album yet. The folk influence remains, as do traces of their love of The Beach Boys, but Shields is – mostly – so confident it could be a debut album. It’s also the first time all the songwriting has been credited to the entire band.It opens with “Sleeping Ute”, a swirling psychedelic vortex evoking longing and endings: “those countless empty days made me dizzy when I woke… I know no other way than straight on out the door”. It’s a Read more ...
theartsdesk
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros: Global A Go-Go, StreetcoreLisa-Marie FerlaAs well as marking the 10th anniversary of Joe Strummer's death, 2012 would also have been the year the legendary Clash frontman turned 60. The reissue of these two albums, recorded with his last band the Mescaleros, is therefore doubly timely.The band's three albums built on the very best of the globe-trotting, more experimental themes that had begun to sneak into The Clash's work before they disbanded in 1985, but did so in a way that kept them vital and accessible to those of us raised on three-chord punk Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Gaslamp Killer is Californian DJ-producer William Bensussen, beardy Weird Al Yankovich lookalike and one of the key figures in LA’s Brainfeeder label collective. His reputation began to rise around five years ago with an LA club night called Low End Theory that would play music rooted in hip hop and electronica, far from four-to-the-floor house - tending, in fact, towards the bizarre. His debut album is much anticipated by those who like their beats broken and their synthesisers gnarly. Breakthrough, then, is a thoroughly enjoyable experience in that vein, albeit not as off-the-wall Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Patti Smith does not appear to change very much, visually. Her image is undoubtedly part of her appeal, especially in Brighton with its large lesbian population. She arrives on stage in pale blue jeans, a white shirt and a baggy cardy-style jacket, face unadorned with make-up and hair straggled down around her shoulders. From a distance she looks very much as she did in the mid-Seventies. She certainly doesn’t look 65.Her Brighton audience are zealously partisan. This has a dual effect. It gives the evening real electricity and a sense of laser-focused affection which Smith bathes in, Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's a truism in dance music culture that “everyone's a DJ nowadays”. It's generally meant in a flip, pejorative sense – suggesting that cheap technology means every man Jack and his dog can put a sequence of records together and the role is somehow devalued. But it hides a rather more positive truth, which is that dance culture is intrinsically participative, that the line between industry and punters is so blurred as to be non-existent, that those punters truly are easily as important as the hallowed DJs they look up to.Certainly at the Dimensions Festival, the boundaries seem pretty fluid Read more ...
garth.cartwright
At 66 Larry Graham remains a remarkably supple, handsome man. The huge afro that once towered over him is long gone but the ability to pluck and thump the funkiest rhythms on earth from his white bass remains unmatched. Graham made his name as original bassist/bass vocalist in Sly & The Family Stone, the Bay Area band that proved such a potent force in popular music 1968-1973.Assembled by DJ/vocalist/pianist Sylvester Stewart aka Sly Stone in 1966, The Family Stone combined men and women, blacks and whites, rock with soul. And in Graham they had their secret weapon – playing bass with his Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's hard to hear P!nk without thinking of the kind of “punks” that scowl in the corners of American high-school movies, possibly befriending some “nerds”, revealing a sensitive side, and/or standing up to a “jock” at some crucial point in the plot. Angst and outsiderdom with a predictable designated role to play within a regimented and ritualised ecosystem. None of which is a bad thing as such – teen movies can be great, and so can P!ink albums, if you're in the mood. Or drunk. This is her sixth album since switching from R&B to punky-poppy-rocky-pop for 2001's M!zzundaztood, and the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The moment everyone will remember came exactly an hour in: Brandon Flowers was singing “All These Things That I've Done” with the conviction of a man at confession. Behind him a video screen showed a loner carrying a long wooden sign on his shoulder like a cross. In the desert in front of him scantily dressed women stood by a grave. Suddenly there was an explosion above us all. Red and silver glitter thunderbolts rained down. Whilst some rushed to gather them up, others waved smartphones to capture the instant on video.Last night’s Killers concert was part of iTunes Download 2012, the Read more ...