New music
bella.todd
“There’re a lot of turds out there, ladies and gentlemen. But they’re not one of them.” It’s Friday afternoon in Larmer Tree Gardens, a wood-rimmed, laurel-trimmed, urn-decorated corner of Dorset, and thank yous are coming thick and fast for Bella Union, the indie label Simon Raymonde founded in 1997 with fellow Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie. To celebrate their 15th birthday, the defenders of much that is beautiful, offbeat, meditative and plain meaningful in the world of music are curating the first day of the seventh End of the Road, the boutique festival dedicated to all that is beautiful, Read more ...
theartsdesk
The seventh radio show from theartsdesk features a wealth of eclectic music, from grime to Bach, while Joe Muggs and Peter Culshaw discuss everything from French café culture of the Fifties to sub-Saharan politics in the Sudan and northern Mali.Questions that arise include: Is the Bohemian outsider philosophy dead? Have the Olympics helped kill off the old artistic ideal of seeking “derangement of the senses” in favour of clean living? How much hipper is Bradley Wiggins than Paul Weller?A track from jazzer Brad Mehldau’s new record is played alongside one from the solo piano album by Chilli Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Ian Hunter’s new album, When I’m President, is an almost obscenely vibrant piece of work for a man who – despite that impossibly golden mop of hair – is now 73 years old. But then Hunter has always been a rock'n'roll survivor. Born in Shropshire in 1939, he was a 30-something industry veteran by the time his band Mott The Hoople, four albums into a career that had failed to scale even the nursery slopes of fame and fortune, scored their breakthrough hit in 1972 with David Bowie’s glam anthem “All the Young Dudes”.After enjoying three years of superstardom with Mott, whose run of irrepressible Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
If the name is both banal and irritating – seemingly you are expected to spell it kNIFE and fORK – this album is a triumph on its own terms. Despite it being at times overly self-conscious, there are occasional flashes of dark genius.The band are a duo, Laurie Hall and Eric Drew Feldman, who last made an album eight years ago. They have attracted raves from PJ Harvey and Frank Black, although as Feldman has worked with both artists, and they are probably mates, how seriously should we take their plaudits? Still, it gives you some idea of the aesthetic parameters, as does the fact that the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The death of lyricist Hal David at 91 is a sad reminder that the golden age of a uniquely American approach to songwriting is getting further and further away. The Bacharach and David brand will last, as will classic songs like “Anyone Who Had a Heart”, “Don’t Make Me Over”, “Magic Moments”, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head, “The Look of Love” and “Walk On By”. Yet David’s passing emphasises that although these compositions have a life of their own, they remain rooted in an era that becomes less and less tangible as the years pass.Of course, for David and his partner Burt Bacharach Read more ...
theartsdesk
Lee Hazlewood: A House Safe for TigersGraham RicksonLee Hazlewood’s voice can still invoke awe. It's gravelly, sonorous, rasping, but incredibly affecting – even when he’s scraping around in the depths it always sounds musical. A reissue of a hard-to-find 1975 LP, A House Safe for Tigers was originally the soundtrack to a Swedish TV movie directed by Hazlewood’s friend Torbjörn Axelman. Hazlewood had moved to Sweden in 1970, partly to ensure that his son wouldn’t be drafted to Vietnam. He continued to record and release new material, most of which slipped under the radar.A House Safe Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Pet Shop Boys are the kind of national treasure that make the English so inscrutable. For 30 years they have made pop music that is sophisticated, camp and deadpan, an unlikely formula which has shifted over 100 million records, making them the most successful pop duo ever. Their 11th studio album, Elysium, will be released on 10 September. Recorded in Los Angeles, it is a slower, more sumptuous work than their fans have become used to. Could it be the time has come for a change?The pair have always projected a strong public image, part act and part their own eccentric selves, but when I meet Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Growing up in public is never easy. After all the attention that The Vaccines attracted with their post-Strokes smash-and-grab debut What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? they have plenty to prove with their follow-up. Do they duplicate the Ramones-meets-Ronettes-in-the-Hadron-Collider template or go for something different and sophisticated? Well, they’ve got a new look, ditching the leather for denim and growing their hair, and the sequel certainly sounds different, but whether it is more sophisticated is another matter entirely.Come of Age is a tremendously easy album to like but a hugely Read more ...
theartsdesk
Back in March theartsdesk reviewed the much anticipated debut album by 24-year-old Londoner Michael Kiwanuka, winner of the BBC’s Sound of 2012 poll and a man possessed of a voice not so much to be reckoned with as unconditionally surrendered to.A rich blending of old-school analogue soul influences – our critic Russ Coffey picked up on similarities to Bill Withers, Otis Redding and Gil Scott-Heron – and elements of folk, jazz and R&B, Home Again is a slow, smooth ride back to the Seventies. Retro, yes, and hardly ground-breaking, but full of beautifully crafted songs and a deep, enduring Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Jason Lytle has a “fervent appreciation”, he says, “for bands that don’t exist anymore”. It’s why he’s playing the cover of “Here”, by Pavement, that has become a staple of his band Grandaddy’s live sets on this open-ended reunion tour, although it doesn’t explain why the time is right for a Grandaddy reunion in the first place.Not that any of the caps or plaid shirts under the ABC’s giant disco ball were complaining, of course. While it seems that these days Nineties alternative bands will reunite at the drop of a hat - or a royalty cheque - you would have been hard-pressed to find any Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Nine albums and almost 10 years in, Animal Collective show no signs of smoothing the edges from their herky-jerk, ADHD psyche-pop. Vocals carry a melody, but everything else in the mix counters that – pinging sounds, Afro-inspired percussion, bloops, stabs of synth. Beyond Animal Collective, only a bear with a sore head could make psychedelia this twitchy.Obviously, Animal Collective are doing something right and I’ve tried and tried to get my head around their output. Seeing them live was confusing. I just wished they would stick to the song they had started and take it to its conclusion, Read more ...
mark.kidel
With the overwhelming acclaim that welcomed their first album, Très Très Fort, the musical paralympic champions Staff Benda Bilii faced a challenge with their second. Would their unusually stirring backstory as disabled polio victims and destitute street children in Kinshasa become a burden rather than a draw?Bouger Le Monde doesn’t disappoint, although there are moments when their very exuberance becomes a little excessive, as if they were responding to audiences that clearly preferred the super-charged frenzy of their up-tempo rumba to the slower songs that brought greater balance and Read more ...