New music
Thomas H. Green
CVC stands for Church Village Collective, a six-piece who hail from the countryside near Cardiff. They were the best live act I saw last year (of a long list which includes Melt Yourself Down, Paul McCartney, The Prodigy and Wet Leg). It was a joyously raucous and contagious gig, front-loaded with Seventies rock vibes and a sense of fun, so I’m intrigued to hear if their debut album can live up to it. But they’re a different proposition on record. The raucous rock wildness is missing, but the Seventies are there in a mellower, cheesier form.The best bits of Get Real, recorded in guitarist Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Watching caroline, the experimental post-rock octet, play live is an immersive experience. The band stands elbow to elbow among the audience. Shrouded in near darkness, the music envelopes the room and everyone in it.Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never actually seen caroline live. I missed their show in Manchester and it is my biggest regret of 2022, as their eponymous debut is my favourite album of the year. The album came out in February and its gorgeous, clattery compositions have had a hold on me ever since.I think the beauty in caroline’s music lies in how they balance their influences. The Read more ...
Katie Colombus
When asked what I wanted for Christmas this year, my response was mostly that I just want to drink Baileys out of Lindt bunnies and dance in my socks in the kitchen. Y'know?More specifically though, it's Beyonce's Renaissance that I particularly wish to be kitchen-disco-ing to. Mostly because it is the strongest, sexiest riot of soul, disco and house music I've heard in an age, but also because Queen Bey is (basically) the same age as me and my children think she's cool, which keeps hope alive in my soul.Whilst Harry Styles' "As It Was" and Taylor Swift's "Anti-Hero" have been particular Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In December 1977, the music weekly Sounds included an article about the County Durham punk band Penetration. By Jon Savage, it was headlined The Future Is Female. The same four words would be used by the band for their promotional badges.Penetration were fronted by Pauline Murray. In the article, an unidentified male band member is quoted as saying “we’ve never considered Pauline as anything different from just another member of the group – why should she be any different? It's person to person that's important..."Pauline Murray said “I just feel as though I'm a boy. (laughter). Nooooo. You' Read more ...
Tom Carr
Flick through my 2022 Spotify Wrapped playlist and those who know me best won’t be surprised by what they find. Architects, the UK’s preeminent metal group who grapple with progressing their sound further on the classic symptoms of a broken spirit – check. Foals, the indie delights who continue to sweep all before them, and adorned new, summery vibes with latest album Life Is Yours. Check.Also present are Alexisonfire, Rolo Tomassi, and Zeal & Ardor among many others, but all indicative of how my go to listens span the spectrum of hardcore and metal, to straight edged indie/rock. Though Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Some of what’s nourishing the debut album by Sweden’s Dina Ögon is evident. A Bossa Nova jazz-pop essence evokes Brazil’s Quarteto em Cy. There’s a trip-hop undertow. Vocal lines bring to mind Free Design. Less easy to pinpoint is a melodic sensibility which seems to be derived from local traditions; echoing the sort of fusion pioneered by Jan Johansson’s Jazz på svenska and Merit Hemmingson when she reframed folk music on the Svensk folkmusik på beat albums.It’s likely Dina Ögon – the name translates as “your eyes” – are mindful of all or some of this, but what they’ve come up with doesn’t Read more ...
Graham Fuller
This is not a rehash of my Skinty Fia review, but smoke from the same grate.Asbury Park, New Jersey, 5 October – we've driven down from NYC to see Fontaines DC play hopefully most of their blistering third album at the Stone Pony venue. Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny played here in the Seventies. It's legendary – and bad news for we arthritics. The stage is not at the end of the narrow hall opposite the entrance and the bar but runs along a side wall, so the audience is squashed and stretched in front of it. Naturally wanting to get as close as we could to the Irish quintet Read more ...
Liz Thomson
One of popular music’s greatest songwriting talents released her final album back in January. The Light at the End of the Line was Janis Ian’s first album of all-new material in 15 years, and it was planned as a stage-setter for her swan-song tour, US dates scheduled through to the end of the year, European concerts to follow. Then Ian got hit by a particularly nasty form of laryngitis that meant she could no longer sing.I’m so glad I got to see her New York show just a couple of weeks earlier but to think I will never see her play live again makes me very sad. If you never saw her – well, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beatles loomed over everything else. It wasn’t inevitable, but the arrival of the revealing Revolver box set and Peter Jackson’s compelling Get Back film confirmed that there is more to say about what’s known, and also that there are new things to say about popular music’s most inspirational phenomenon of the 20th century.Just as it was when The Beatles were operational, the Revolver box and Get Back gave other things out there standards to aspire to. This pair of archive releases became a wholly unexpected yardstick for 2022. Obviously though, brows at labels aren’t furrowing about Read more ...
peter.quinn
Bolivian marching powder, sexual violence, fraud. As the actions of the present kakistocracy edged ever closer to that of a lost Brian De Palma film script, it was to music that we turned once again for beauty and the best of humanity.With stunning recorded sound plus an irresistible communion between singer and band, Lizz Wright’s Holding Space was the most transporting album I heard this year. Recorded live in Berlin on the final date of her 2018 European summer tour, the material ranged from her 2003 Verve debut, Salt, to her most recent studio album, 2017’s Grace.Cécile McLorin Salvant’s Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It’s always hard to choose one album to spotlight come the annual Best Ofs, and 2022 has given us an extraordinary embarrassment of riches to choose from – the bountiful bastard…January brought with it a small but perfectly formed under-the-radar gem in Bed Wetter’s A Life in the Day. A deeply personal piece, it saw producer Geoff Kirkwood removing his Man Power mask and letting us in to his world of gorgeous, atmospheric sound sculptures.Andy Bell’s Flicker followed. A double album of wide-eyed eclecticism, Bell’s second solo outing felt simultaneously new and nostalgic. It was, without Read more ...
mark.kidel
I am a sucker for Malian singers. I have been ever since I made a couple of films there at the end of the 1980s. According to ancient tradition, the jalis, and other singers have a mission: to open the hearts of those who hear them, and to fill them with healing and courage. Thirty years on, Rokia Koné keeps the flame going and touches me in the same way. Her first solo album, the highpoint of the year for me is, a collaboration with US producer Jacknife Lee, who brings to the combination exquisite taste and a profound complicity with West African soul. He is always at the service of the Read more ...