New music
david.cheal
This was one of the funkiest shows I’ve seen for a long while; perhaps even since Prince’s peerlessly funky residence at the same venue in 2007 (though nowhere near as brilliant). There came a moment, on "Deeper Underground", when everything just clicked – the bassist and the drummer were locked in a deep groove, the guitarist was doing his precisely controlled chopping thing, the percussionist was rattling his timbales, the brass section popped and squirted, the backing singers shimmied, and singer Jay Kay himself did that weird dance, almost nerdy: glide-jerk, glide-jerk. Looking Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As her black robe swirled around a black leotard, Lykke Li became the anti-Stevie Nicks. Instead of conjuring the mellow California feeling, she sang “sadness is a blessing”. Yet this Swede’s pop is as uplifting, as transporting as any good vibe merchant. More so. Last night’s show transfixed with its Bo Diddley beats, gospel choruses and wheezy garage rock organ. Rather than being a retro futurist, Lykke Li takes from the past and recasts it to fit her vision of what affecting pop ought to be.Recent album Wounded Rhymes was a magnificent drama, the post-nuclear-age Shangri-Las slugging it Read more ...
David Nice
Bear with me while, like supergroomed rising star Miloš Karadaglić retuning his guitar to a mellower vein, I adjust my concert-hall vocab and describe this as a no-gimmicks sell-out gig underground with young musicians from the London Philharmonic’s Foyle Future Firsts scheme presenting two varied sets and Karadaglić headlining. And now I’ll just revert to old habits and declare the meat to be a slice of Classicism chromatically spiced (Mozart) and a 20th-century maverick pushing Neo-Baroque into near-atonality (Stravinsky), our top guitarist serenading by way of late-night coda. All this to Read more ...
howard.male
Given that Seun Kuti and Egypt 80’s new album nearly blew my speaker covers off with its focused punch and irrepressible energy, the band really shouldn’t have had a problem making an impression on Tuesday night’s lacklustre Later… with Jools Holland. But bafflingly, they chugged awkwardly into life but never got up a proper head of steam. A frustratingly bass-light sound mix obviously didn't help, but nevertheless it somewhat dampened my previously high expectations for last night’s Royal Festival Hall gig.But this muted TV performance must have been down to the fact that a good Afrobeat Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
With k.d. lang's original "cowpunk" days of Absolute Torch and Twang now a distant memory, she has settled into the role of deluxe vocal stylist with a bit of heritage balladry on the side (for instance, her collaboration with Tony Bennett, A Wonderful World). This batch of new material, most of it co-written with co-producer Joe Pisapia, rings familiar lang-esque bells. We're barely into the first track, "I Confess", when shades of her idol Roy Orbison become discernable in the vertiginous melodrama of the arrangement, and the late, great Patsy Cline frequently takes a peek over lang' Read more ...
graeme.thomson
I’ll say this much for Josh Ritter last night, he was happy to be there. I’ve never seen a man grin quite so much on stage, and apparently with complete sincerity. Before the Idaho-born singer-songwriter played a note he promised that “we’ll have a ball”, and by the end he had certainly delivered. And yet still some small but essential ingredient seemed to be lacking.Ritter is one of those supremely gifted all-rounders who turns his hand to most types of Americana without ever quite stamping his imprint indelibly on any of it. He and his excellent four-piece backing group, the Royal City Band Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day this Saturday, 16 April, will give vinyl a small boost. Many artists are creating special limited editions. Bands love all that. It reminds them of when people cared about music as more than "content". The Fall was originally available as a Gorllaz fan-club download last December and will be available on CD imminently but king Gorilla, Damon Albarn, wanted it first and foremost as celebratory Record Store Day vinyl - which is how I'm listening to it.While the format is retro, paradoxically The Fall was recorded primarily on iPad during Gorillaz' 2010 US tour and the inner Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pål Moddi Knutsen is from Senja, an island off north Norway’s west coast. Inside the Arctic Circle, it’s so far north as to be all but adjacent to the borders with Sweden and Finland. Due east, Murmansk is less than half the distance of Oslo. It’s no surprise that Moddi’s debut album evokes solitude, the endless light, the unbroken night and the contemplation that has to come with the territory.Accordion is his lead instrument. He also plays acoustic guitar. Floriography was produced in Reykjavik by Valgeir Sigurðssun, who has filled out the sound with gentle strings, pattering percussion, Read more ...
joe.muggs
All of rock is here. Like, really, all of it. One tries to avoid too many direct comparisons with other artists in a review but with Foo Fighters it's impossible. Just on my first casual listen through this album, I jotted down the following reference points: Sonic Youth, Metallica, The Kinks, Bryan Adams, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Guns N' Roses, Fleetwood Mac, Soundgarden, Marilyn Manson, Queens of the Stone Age, Eighties Ozzy Osbourne, Wings, Foreigner, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Pixies. Oh OK, yes, and a little Nirvana too. It's as if five decades of rock – and, note well, only rock – Read more ...
peter.quinn
The last time I saw Esperanza Spalding live, at Ronnie Scott's towards the end of 2009, the mention of her name would largely have been greeted with quizzical looks. Now, thanks to that astounding Grammy win for Best New Artist and a gazillion disgruntled Justin Bieber fans – seriously, you do not want to mess with those pesky Beliebers - her profile has soared exponentially.Performing songs from her 2010 release, Chamber Music Society, in a single continuous set, Spalding did her utmost to recreate the album's singularly intimate atmosphere – no easy feat in the Barbican. To give some Read more ...
david.cheal
Frothier than a zero-gravity cappuccino, camper than a gay pride march through Brighton, cheesier than all the fromageries in France, and with almost as many beats per minute as a hummingbird’s heart: Kylie is back with a brand new show, and it’s quite something. Others will doubtless have rolled out the statistics – that it cost £530 million to stage, is built and staffed by a crew of 7,000, and requires a fleet of trucks that would stretch from London to Luton to keep it on the road. Or something. Whatever: it’s big, it’s spectacular, it’s silly, it’s kinky, it’s utterly inconsequential, Read more ...
marcus.odair
Inspired to take up the piano by his neighbours Bud and Richie Powell, Philadelphia’s McCoy Tyner made jazz history as a member of the early-1960s John Coltrane quartet before emerging as a leader at Blue Note records. If his voicings seem any less distinctive today, it’s only because they have been so influential. And though his attack may have mellowed a little, that famous haymaker left hand remains very much in evidence several years after he blew out the candles on his 70th birthday cake.
But as much as his technical ability, what was most remarkable last night – along with a dapper Read more ...